Boris Efimov

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Boris Efimov

Boris Efimovich Efimov (Russian: Борис Ефимович Ефимов) (born 28 September 1900 in Kiev) is a Soviet political cartoonist and propaganda artist best known for his political caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis produced before and during World War II.

He was born as Boris Fridland, the second son of a Jewish shoemaker. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Białystok, where he grew up alongside his older brother Mikhail. During the First World War, his family fled the advancing German armies and returned to Kiev, where he pursued legal studies, only to be interrupted by the October Revolution when he was drafted into the Kievian Red Army dealing with subsequent turmoil. He began to express his emotions through caricatures of politicians, the first of which were published in 1919 and circulated in the Kievian Red Army.

From 1920 to 1921, Efimov designed posters and brochures for the communist organisation Agitprop, finally moving to Moscow after his brother, who worked as an editor for Pravda, offered him a job drawing political cartoons. His artistic talent, directed mainly against the "capitalist west", gained him prominence, and his work started appearing in such titles as Izvestia, Krokodil and Ogonyok, a magazine founded by his brother Mikhail Koltsov (1898-1940). 1924 saw the publication of his first book, Politicheskiye Karikatury, which included a foreword from Leon Trotsky, a risky move considering Stalin's antipathy. It therefore met with initial disapproval from the publisher, Yuri Steklov, who would later pay with his life for not having Trotsky's words removed. As the 1920s waned, Efimov managed to avoid Stalin's wrath by portraying Trotsky as a traitor and fascist, despite their friendship.

Following the war, he travelled to the Nuremberg Trials with the task of caricaturizing the Nazi defendants. He was then ordered to poke fun at the Western powers in what was transforming into the Cold War. He went on to become the chief editor at Agitprop, and cooperated with Pravda until the 80s. He published an autobiography, Moi Vek, for his centennial, and currently resides in Moscow.

He received USSR State Prizes in 1950 and 1951 and was named People's Painter of the USSR in 1967.

In a 2005 interview to the Russian TV Yefimov recalled his experiences in Petrograd during the Russian Revolution, admitting that he had changed his real name in order to dissimulate his Jewish origins. While his name seems to be best known in English as "Efimov", an alternative transliteration of "Yefimov" is also sometimes used (and is much closer to the true sound of his name in Russian).