RIP Boris Yefimov
Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:01 pm
Boris Yefimov
Boris Yefimov, who died yesterday aged 108, was the Russia' s leading political cartoonist of the 20th century and one of the last surviving witnesses to the birth of the Soviet Union.
Boris Yefimov, who died yesterday aged 108, was the Russia' s leading political cartoonist of the 20th century and one of the last surviving witnesses to the birth of the Soviet Union.
During his lifetime Yefimov saw revolution, civil war, genocide, two world wars, the Cold War and a putsch. As a boy he saw the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and later he met Lenin. He personally knew many prominent revolutionaries, including Trotsky and Bukharin. He sat in the Great Hall of Columns as around him the show trials destroyed the lives of many former colleagues.
During the Second World War Yefimov saw for himself the horrors of concentration camps of Majdanek and Treblinka in Poland. He stood opposite the Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials. Fifty years on, he watched from the window of his apartment as Yeltsin's tanks fired on the Russian parliament. He even lived to cast his vote for Putin.
