A physician of the Left Opposition who shares a name with the first president of Russia
He has no connection to Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia. Even the Russian spellings differ: Eltsin for him, Yeltsin for the president.
He was born in 1876 in Zvenigorodka, Kiev Governorate (some sources give 1875). He joined the RSDLP in 1897 and completed medical studies at Novorossiysk University in Odessa the following year, working thereafter as a physician. Exiled to Ufa Governorate in 1910 for revolutionary activity, he worked as a sanitary doctor in Belebey and attached himself to the Bolsheviks. After the revolution he served in local soviets and on various commissions, and from 1923 he belonged to the Left Opposition and signed the Declaration of 46. Expelled from the party in 1927, he was exiled to Ust-Vym early the next year and held in the Suzdal political isolator in 1929. Arrested again in 1936 and exiled to Siberia, he was one of the organizers of a hunger strike by political prisoners in Magadan that year. He was shot in 1937 and rehabilitated on 23 November 1956. His son Viktor Borisovich Eltsin was also active in the opposition.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1897Joined the RSDLP
- 1898Graduated in medicine, Novorossiysk University, Odessa
- 1910Exiled to Ufa Governorate; sanitary doctor in Belebey
- 1923Joined the Left Opposition, signed the Declaration of 46
- 1927Expelled from the party
- 1928–1929Exiled to Ust-Vym, then held in the Suzdal political isolator
- 1936Arrested again, exiled to Siberia, organized a hunger strike of political prisoners in Magadan
- 1937Shot
- 1956Rehabilitated
Related historical events
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Left Opposition
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left Oppositionsignatory of the Declaration of the 46From 1923 he belonged to the Left Opposition and signed the Declaration of the 46.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeLeft Opposition targetRepeatedly exiled and imprisoned for Left Opposition activity, he was executed in 1937.
Chairman of the Ufa Provincial Sovnarkom, 1918-1920
In April 1918 he became chairman of the Ufa provincial Sovnarkom. He pursued the nationalization of factories in the Bashkir industrial region and, together with provincial party committee chairman and food commissar Aleksandr Tsyurupa, used the fighting detachments raised by Ufa military commissar Erazm Kadomtsev to pump grain out of the Cossack villages. Grain trains left for Lenin in Moscow almost daily, and this helped set off the Dutov uprising. Eltsin opposed Kadomtsev's militia-style units as contrary to Trotsky's centralized military administration and wrote to Lenin that Kadomtsev was sabotaging the creation of the Red Army; a commission sent by Trotsky branded the detachments amateurish and partisan, and Kadomtsev was removed. He also allowed armed detachments of Muslim nationalists to form.
After the Czechoslovak Legion revolt in May 1918 he argued that the Bolsheviks withdraw from Ufa; in June he moved to Moscow, where Lenin appointed him to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the NKVD collegium, and he served as deputy people's commissar of internal affairs. He proposed to Lenin that the regime be tightened, and Lenin directed him not to propose constitutional changes and to abandon such thoughts. In January 1919 he returned to Ufa with a mandate to organize Soviet power in Bashkiria, but he opposed the creation of a Tatar-Bashkir republic and met Lenin over the question at the Ninth Party Congress in April 1920. His handling of factory restoration in Bashkiria drew Lenin's criticism, and he was removed from his posts in 1920. He then worked in the Ukrainian Commissariat of Social Security, the Main Political Education Committee, and the RSFSR State Planning Commission.