Pulitzer winner Barry’s 1996 report from Russia

While the Boston Globe’s visual-arts critic, Sebastian Smee, continues to receive well-deserved accolades for his Pulitzer Prize, it is less well-known that another of yesterday’s Pulitzer winners has strong Boston ties, too.

Ellen Barry of the New York Times, who shared the award for international reporting with her Times colleague Clifford Levy, is a former reporter for the Globe and the Boston Phoenix. Ellen and I worked together at the Phoenix in the mid-1990s.

In 1996, she reported from Russia for the Phoenix on Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign — and wrote a classic story headlined “Generation Nyet.” The folks at the Phoenix have dug the story of their archives and linked to it anew. It is well worth your time, as is Phoenix editor Carly Carioli’s tribute.