| Boris Yefimov | |
 | |
| Birth: | 11 October 1900 Kyiv, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Death: | 1 October 2008 Moscow, Russia |
| Age: | 107 years, 356 days |
| Country: |  RUS
|
| Centenarian | |
Boris Yefimovich Yefimov (born Boris Khaimovich Fridlyand) (Russian: Борис Ефимович Ефимов (Борис Хаймович Фридлянд)) (11 October 1900 – 1 October 2008) was a Russian centenarian and political cartoonist.
Biography[]
Boris Fridlyand was born on 11 October 1900 (O.S. 28 September 1900) in Kiev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).
Yefimov published his first cartoon, a caricature mocking the White Army General Anton Denikin in 1918, after his elder brother, journalist Mikhail Koltsov, suggested that he start drawing. Like his brother, Mikhail, he became a follower of the Bolshevik cause. When Mikhail moved to Moscow to work as a journalist, he encouraged his younger brother to join him and got him a job as an agitprop cartoonist working for Pravda, producing propaganda posters for the new regime. He changed his name to Yefimov to conceal his Jewish background.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 made Yefimov's work in many ways easier. In a country where many were illiterate and images were deployed as the most straightforward propaganda, it was through his front-page cartoons of the Nazi hierarchy that many ordinary Soviet citizens became familiar with their enemies.
As the cold war intensified, Yefimov turned his sights on the west, portraying Winston Churchill and Harry Truman as aggressors, a change of outlook that he adapted to philosophically, although he retained respect for Churchill as a statesman - and never put him in the same league as Hitler or Goebbels.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yefimov lamented that “political cartooning doesn’t exist anymore.”
On 11 October 2000 he celebrated his 100th birthday and became a centenarian. He was married twice and had one son. Boris Yefimov died in Moscow, Russia, on 1 October 2008, 10 days prior to his 108th birthday, aged 107 years, 356 days. At the time of death, he was the oldest living person in Russia, as well, as the last Russian born in the 19th century.
Gallery
References[]
- Stalin’s favorite cartoonist passed away aged 108 on Wednesday The St. Petersburg Times, 3 October 2008
- Soviet cartoonist and propagandist whose work covered the entire history of the USSR The Guardian, 4 October 2008