Boris Yefimov

• Born 1900-10-11 · Died 2008-10-01

Boris Yefimov was a Soviet and Russian political cartoonist best known for his critical political caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis before and during World War II. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Białystok but during World War I, they fled the advancing German armies and returned to Kyiv. There, he pursued legal studies and created caricatures of politicians, which were first published in 1919 and circulated in the Kievan Red Army. He then designed posters and brochures for the communist organization Agitprop. Yefimov moved to Moscow in 1922 when his brother, an editor for Pravda, offered him a job drawing political cartoons. His work started appearing in such titles as Izvestia, Krokodil and Ogoniok. His first book was *Political Cartoons*, which included a foreword by Leon Trotsky. At some point, he has stated he changed his real name in order to conceal his Jewish origins. In 1937, he covered the Show Trials and drew cartoons against people he had previously admired within the Soviet leadership. Following World War II, Yefimov traveled to the Nuremberg trials for the task of caricaturing the Nazi defendants. He went on to become the chief editor of Agitprop, and cooperated with Pravda until the 1980s. For some period, he was the chief illustrator for the newspaper Izvestia. In 2002, he became chief of the Political Propaganda Department of the Russian Academy of Arts. In his old age, his vision began to deteriorate. In 1999, he underwent cataract surgery, which at least partially restored the vision in his right eye.