August 21, 2000
Russia scholar paints startling portrait in ‘Yeltsin’ documentary
Despite contemporary Russia’s serious troubles, its founding father, Boris Yeltsin, will be portrayed in an unexpectedly sympathetic light when public television profiles the former Russian president in a 90-minute nationwide special on Aug. 28.
Americans often view Yeltsin as an erratic character who dragged his vast nation through economic crises, botched reforms and the collapse of law and order.
But Herbert Ellison, chief consulant and executive producer for the PBS special and a University of Washington 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.”
His documentary allows associates such as Yegor Gaidar and Alexander Yakovlev to give first-hand testimony to the vision and boldness 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.
“Yeltsin,” to be broadcast Aug. 28 (in Seattle at 9 p.m. on KCTS-9), highlights perhaps 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 then goes on to portray Yeltsin’s 14 years at the center of Russian politics.
Ellison said he drew from his experience with an earlier documentary, “Messengers from Moscow” the acclaimed four-part BBC/PBS series on the Cold War.
A former head of the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., Ellison joined the University of Washington in 1968. He is a professor in the history department and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, of which he is a former director.
He speaks Russian fluently and has published numerous books and articles since he began visiting the Soviet Union in 1958 and became acquainted with many top leaders there. 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.
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Ellison can be reached at (206) 685-0105 or {hellison@u.washington.edu}.
