UW professor paints ‘different’ picture of Yeltsin in PBS program

Get ready for a new view of Boris Yeltsin when PBS profiles the former Russian president in a 90-minute special on Aug. 28.

Americans tend to view Yeltsin as an erratic character who dragged his vast nation through economic crises, botched reforms and the collapse of law and order before finally stepping down at the dawn of the year 2000.

But Herb Ellison, chief consulant and executive producer for the program and a prominent UW international studies professor for three decades, uses interviews with the leader’s friends and adversaries to paint a different picture in Yeltsin.

“This is not,” Ellison said, “a bumbling drunkard.”

The documentary features associates such as Yegor Gaidar and Alexander Yakovlev describing the remarkable boldness and vision of Yeltsin, who became not only Russia’s first elected president, but the first leader in its history to give up power of his own free will.

Any of Yeltsin’s three major accomplishments, Ellison said, would place him in the front ranks of 20th century figures: destroying communist power, launching a market economy and peacefully dismantling a powerful empire.

Yeltsin did all that while afflicted with a weak heart and severe back pain caused by a plane crash; Ellison believes that medication and ill health may account for the episodes of “erratic” behavior.

Herb Ellison

Yeltsin, to be broadcast Aug. 28 at 9 p.m. on Seattle’s KCTS-9, highlights his most famous moment - climbing aboard one of the tanks ringing the Russian Parliament building in 1991 and proclaiming his support of a democratic constitution. It also provides insight into his 14 years at the center of Russian politics.

To tell this story, Ellison drew from his experience with an earlier documentary, Messengers from Moscow a four-part BBC/PBS series on the Cold War.

Ellison is a former head of the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., who joined the UW in 1968. He is a professor of Russian history in the history department and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, of which he is a former director.

He has published numerous books and articles since he began visiting the Soviet Union in 1958, speaks the language fluently and has long known many of the leaders. Occasionally branded a “Cold Warrior” before the fall of communism, Ellison now is critical of U.S. moves toward a strategic missile-defense system that he believes could push the new democratic Russia away from the West. He is currently writing a book to be titled, The Yeltsin Revolution.

Ellison’s many honors include the 1996 World Citizen Award from the World Affairs Council of Seattle.

Underwriters of Yeltsin are the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Starr Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, F.M. Kirby Foundation, F.R. McAbee, Tomlinson Family Foundation, National Bureau of Asian Research, Monterrey Institute of International Studies and family and friends of Herbert Ellison. ¶

Steven Goldsmith, News & Information