Yefimov, Boris

▪ 2009

Boris Fridland 

      Soviet cartoonist

born Sept. 28, 1899, Kiev, Ukraine, Russian Empire

died Oct. 1, 2008, Moscow, Russia

chronicled the history of his country—especially the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin—through robustly drawn satiric cartoons, beginning in 1916. He began drawing as a child in Bialystok, Pol., where the family lived until World War I broke out. He studied art and law in Kiev, but his studies were interrupted by the Bolshevik Revolution. During this period he also changed his name to Yefimov, which sounded less Jewish than Fridland. (His brother, who took the name Mikhail Koltsov, became a popular journalist but was later executed on Stalin's orders.) By the early 1920s Yefimov was noted for his propagandist posters, pamphlets, and cartoons in Pravda, Izvestiya, and other government-approved publications. His World War II satires of Hitler attracted Stalin's attention, and from 1947 until Stalin's death, he worked closely with the Soviet leader, who often commissioned cartoons on specific subjects. Yefimov's life spanned more than a century: as a boy he saw the last Tsar; he later met Lenin and Trotsky (who wrote the introduction for his first collection of cartoons in 1924); and toward the end of his life, he voted for Pres. Vladimir Putin. In 2007 Yefimov was named chief artist of Izvestiya.

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