When the famous cartoonist Boris Efimov turned only 100 years old, all the newspapers wrote about it excitedly.

He survived the revolution, the Civil and Patriotic Wars, in a word, all the epochs of the past century. Five years later, Boris Efimovich celebrated the next anniversary. September 28, 2008 he is already 108! The correspondent of "RG" met with the long-lived artist and asked him a few questions.

I don't draw anymore

Russian newspaper:Open the secret: how did you manage to live to such a venerable age? Do you follow any special diets or practices?

Boris Efimov: No way. I like one anecdote. In the Caucasus, a centenarian is honored, who tells that he leads a healthy lifestyle, does not drink or smoke. Suddenly drunken screams are heard from the back rows. The old-timer says: "Pay no attention, it was my older brother who got drunk again."

RG:You are the same age as the century, political leaders, artists and scientists came and went before your eyes... The political system, laws, rules of life, style of communication, fashion changed... What period of your life is the most interesting?

Efimov: The age itself was interesting. Every decade has something different. Now it is difficult to single out any one period, a decade. It is necessary to consider the era as a whole.

RG:Are you painting now?

Efimov: No. I don't draw anymore. The period of activity has ended a long time ago. But I continue to work, though in a different field. I write books because I have stories to tell. For example, the book of memoirs "About times and people", written in collaboration with Viktor Fradkin. By the way, it just can be a detailed, detailed answer to the first question. It tells about the people and the times that they filled. There are stories about political figures, and about actors, and about writers, and about my fellow artists, for example, about the Kukryniksy, Ernst Neizvestny, Zurab Tsereteli.

In addition, there are other books of memoirs: "The Age of the Century", "Ten Decades" and others.

RG:What else do you do, how do you spend your time, what books do you read?

Efimov: I read different books, but there is one favorite that I am ready to re-read endlessly. This is Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

RG:Which of today's characters in world politics is the most imaginative?

Efimov: Now there are no such bright characters as were the same Hitler, Mussolini, Tito, who could be ridiculed by noticing one or more details of their behavior, appearance.

RG:Do you follow the current situation with the cartoon genre in the country? Do you have followers today?

Efimov: Of course, there are good cartoonists. These are, for example, Vladimir Mochalov, Igor Smirnov.

But it should be noted that the political cartoon as a genre ceased to exist. What we see now is handwriting.

Angry Stalin

RG:Did you yourself look for characters for cartoons, because you were in the context of what was happening, or was there an order from the authorities every time?

Efimov: I searched myself. I read newspapers, listened to the radio, watched newsreels, then television appeared. I chose the topics myself. But of course there were also orders, including, for example, personally from Stalin. But we can say that I chose 90 percent of the stories myself.

RG:Did the authorities interfere in the creative process, did they point out some detail that needs to be emphasized?

Efimov: Yes, this has happened. For example, we can recall such a case. I drew a caricature of the Japanese militarists. To emphasize their political expansionist ambitions, I endowed them with long teeth. Then Stalin called the editor-in-chief of Pravda, Lev Mekhlis, and became indignant. Say, it offends the national dignity of the Japanese people.

Another example is from more recent times. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of Great Britain. I drew a cartoon of her. This drawing was posted in agitprop windows throughout Moscow and other cities. This aroused the indignation of those in power, as it did not look very diplomatic.

RG:Is it hard for you to realize that your peers are leaving one by one?

Efimov: Of course. This is a great tragedy, it is very difficult to see that you are left alone.

Boris Efimovich Efimov
Ivan Shilov © IA REGNUM

Boris Efimov during his long life managed to visit the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and Russian cartoonist. He saw Nicholas II, Hitler, Stalin, dined with Utyosov, drank vodka with Voroshilov, witnessed two world wars and three revolutions. With a speaking surname Friedland and a repressed brother, Boris Efimov managed to live up to the honorary 108 years. Nikolai Bukharin, at whose trial he was present, said that "this great artist is at the same time a very intelligent and observant politician." Perhaps this is what helped Boris Efimov survive and sketch the entire history of the country in the twentieth century.

Boris Efimovich Efimov

Misha and Borya

The future cartoonist was born in Kyiv in the family of shoemaker Efim Moiseevich Fridlyand on September 28, 1900, after four months of the 19th century. Later, when it became unsafe to be Friedland in the Soviet Union, Boris would take on a pseudonym in honor of his father. His older brother would also change his last name, becoming the famous publicist and journalist Mikhail Koltsov, who was falsely accused of espionage and shot in the 1940s. Perhaps few people influenced Boris as much as his brother.

But at the dawn of his life, little Boris still does not expect anything like this and only takes offense at Misha, when in 1902, during a photo shoot, the elder was allowed to hold a gun, and the younger got only a net with a ball.

“This was the first, but by no means the last, grief in my long life,” he writes.

Siblings Boris Efimov (left) and Mikhail Koltsov. 1908

Efimov claimed that he remembered himself from that very age: from the age of two. It is difficult to rely on a narrator who, after so much time, rethinks the events of his life, his own thoughts and feelings, but, on the other hand, there are not many reasons not to trust Efimov either. Yes, and it is known that he had an amazing memory, and even having exceeded a hundred, the artist could still read Tvardovsky's ballad by heart.

The Friedlands very quickly moved from the handsome city of Kyiv to the city of Bialystok, which did not inspire the kids much, and Efimov never found out why this happened. It was there that they found the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The alien-sounding words "Port Arthur", "Mukden", "Hunghuzi", "Shimose", "Tsushima" frightened the child, soldiers in huge Manchu hats, the names of the tsarist generals Kuropatkin, Grippenberg and Rennenkampf, the names of the Japanese marshals Oyama, Togo, Nogi, the death of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" with the artist Vereshchagin on board.

“The conversations of adults about these terrible events excited the children's imagination. However, ahead were events no less terrible, but closer - the revolution of 1905. Of course, I, a five-year-old boy, could not comprehend the essence of the events that shook the country, which broke into our lives in days of riots, street shooting, pogroms and robberies, ”writes Efimov.

Boris Yefimov and Mikhail Koltsov at large military maneuvers near Kyiv. 1935

One day, my father, trying to understand what was happening on the street, stood at the window with him in his arms and managed to duck down when a revolver bullet pierced the glass exactly in the place where Boris's head had been a second before.

Porridge from Richelieu

Just when Tsar Nicholas granted the country a constitution, and the first State Duma was convened, it was time for Boris and Mikhail to go to school. The guys entered the Bialystok real school - a secondary educational institution, where, unlike the gymnasium, they did not teach Latin and Greek. It was assumed that builders, engineers or technologists would come out of them, but both boys found their calling in print.

Efimov says that he began to draw almost at the age of five. He was not interested in doing it from nature, he did not like to depict houses, trees, cats and horses - something that children are usually drawn to. From Boris's pen came figures and characters created by his own imagination, "feeding on snippets of adult conversations, the stories of his older brother and, most of all, the content of historical books he had read." He even got himself a special thick notebook for such drawings, in which, in his own words, “wild porridge” was created from Richelieu, Garibaldi, Dmitry Donskoy, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln and even God for some reason in the form of a bearded man in a kamilavka.

Drawing, by the way, was the only subject that Efimov almost failed - he barely pulled out a three, which upset everyone at home. But already at school, his brother Mikhail noticed the talent of the youngest, and together they began to publish a handwritten school magazine. Misha edited it, and Boris painted it. As it turned out, this paid off.

Boris Efimov. Indestructible guardian of the revolution. 1932

Blood and Nicholas

Boris Yefimov once saw Nicholas II. It was in Kyiv in 1911, when Boris accompanied his father on a trip to his small homeland. The boy admired the city, which he left at 4 months old. And it so happened that at the same time the sovereign also visited there - to open a monument to his grandfather, Alexander II. I really wanted to see the Tsar, even though the eleven-year-old guy did not have any sympathy for him - the conversations of adults about Khodynka, “Bloody Sunday” and the fact that Nikolai allegedly went to the French embassy to the ball immediately after this tragedy were too fresh in his memory to dance with the ambassador’s wife .

Boris and his father made their way into the front row of the crowded crowd, and the boy perfectly made out the emperor, who was traveling with his august family in a large open carriage.

“To my naive surprise, he was not in a golden crown and ermine mantle, but in a modest military tunic. Taking off his cap, he bowed to both sides, ”recalled Efimov.

Kyiv was in a festive, high spirits. But three days later, the city was shocked by the murder of Stolypin - he was shot from a browning gun at the City Opera House in the presence of the emperor during the play "The Tale of Tsar Saltan." The death of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was shrouded in many mysteries. They said that the tsar did not like him - it was too painful for Stolypin to be an intelligent, strong-willed, strong politician. Stolypin allegedly understood everything, and the last days of his life were oppressed and gloomy. This is far from the last event of not just state, but, perhaps, world significance, which Efimov will testify and about which he will have to draw his own conclusions.

The family miraculously did not end up in Germany in 1914. As a rule, they went there for the summer, and the guys were already looking forward to the next trip, but a relative died, and they remained in the country. Boris Efimov read newspapers “as always”, from where he learned that in the distant Serbian city of Sarajevo, a high school student with the curious surname Princip was shot on the street of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand and his wife. The First World War began.

Boris Efimov. "There is no god but God, and Chamberlain is his prophet." 1925

At first, everyone, including the Friedlands themselves, was seized with patriotism, people sang “God Save the Tsar” in chorus, then the “La Marseillaise” and the Belgian anthem immediately followed. But the ardor quickly evaporated along with the success of the Russian army. Already in the summer of 1915, the front was dangerously close to Bialystok, the Russian army was retreating, and German zeppelins appeared in the sky every now and then. Residents rushed out of the city. Fridland's parents returned to Kyiv, the elder Mikhail went to Petrograd, and Boris went to Kharkov to continue his studies, and at the same time draw cartoons, sending them to his brother in the capital. There Mikhail made a rapid career as a feuilletonist. Boris Fridlyand did not really count on anything, when in 1916 he suddenly stumbled upon his own caricature of the Chairman of the State Duma Rodzianko in the rather popular magazine The Sun of Russia. The cartoon was signed "Bor. Efimov.

The fact that in 1917 a revolution broke out in the capital, Boris Yefimov learned in Kyiv, in the theater, when someone from the administration went up on stage and read out the text about the abdication of the sovereign. According to Efimov, the audience greeted this with a standing ovation and the Marseillaise.

Koltsov and Efimov

After the change of power, the young artist quickly set to work for the benefit of the Soviets. He goes to work as secretary of the editorial and publishing department of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs of Soviet Ukraine, where he directs the production of newspapers, posters and leaflets. And again, his brother, journalist Mikhail Koltsov, played a role in his fate and career: he returned to Kyiv and asked the younger to figure out a caricature for his Red Army newspaper. And now the hobby turns into a sharp tool of the authorities. Since 1920, Efimov has been working as a cartoonist in the newspapers Kommunar, Bolshevik, Visti, after the expulsion of the White Poles and Petliurists from Kyiv, he heads the art and poster department of the Kyiv branch of UkrROSTA and directs the propaganda of the Kyiv railway junction. In 1922, Boris Efimov moved to Moscow and became the youngest employee of the Izvestia newspaper, finally settling in the world of political satire.

Boris Efimov. Poster. 1969

Efimov was published in Pravda, and in 1924 the Izvestia publishing house published the first collection of his works, the preface to which was sketched by the hero of the Civil War and member of the Central Committee, Lev Trotsky, who was delighted with witty art.

The mass and extremely popular magazine Ogonyok began to be published in Moscow in 1923. The initiator of the publication was Mikhail Koltsov. According to Efimov, it was he, the younger brother, who managed to convince the authorities to leave this name - then Mordvinkin was in charge of Glavlit, with whom Efimov worked in Kyiv. Efimov, on the instructions of his brother, rushed to Glavlit on a motorcycle specially obtained for this occasion and literally "took his permission from him", as he was very afraid of upsetting and disappointing his brother. Mayakovsky's poem "We Don't Believe" about Lenin's illness appeared in the first issue.

Perhaps it was luck with the release of the illustrated "Spark" that drew a line under the life of Mikhail Koltsov. Once he told his brother how he was summoned to the Central Committee by Stalin. “At the name of Stalin, then there was no panic fear yet,” notes Efimov.

Iosif Vissarionovich noticed Koltsov in a private conversation that comrades in the Central Committee noticed in Ogonyok a certain servility towards Trotsky, as if the magazine would soon publish about “what closets” Lev Davydovich goes to. The confrontation between the two leaders had long been known, but Koltsov was still struck by the openness with which Stalin expressed his thoughts about the current chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Then Mikhail Koltsov said that, in fact, he received a severe reprimand from the Secretary General.

“Alas, it was something more than a reprimand ... But it became clear many years later,” his younger brother wrote.

Mikhail Koltsov lived only 42 years, after which he was shot on false charges of espionage. In December 1938, Koltsov was arrested, recalled from Spain, where he worked for Pravda and also carried out all sorts of "unofficial" tasks for the party.

Boris Efimov. Attached a "handle". 1982

The arrest of Koltsov was a sensational event. Konstantin Simonov called it the most dramatic, unexpected and "out of the way" episode. Then they got used to it. Efimov remained at large, but hastily crossed to the other side of the street, barely seeing his acquaintances - so as not to put people in an awkward position by the need to greet the brother of the “enemy of the people”.

Koltsov was charged with the most standard charges for the Great Terror. He was kept in Moscow. One day, a bell rang in Yefimov's apartment. On the other end of the wire, they tried to “send greetings from the MEK” to him. "Did you understand? asked an unfamiliar voice. "I don't understand," I replied. - Not understood? Well then, all the best…” Efimov put down the receiver and shrugged his shoulders. And only half an hour later it dawned on him: MEK is Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov. Why did this idiot caller go too far with the conspiracy? Efimov rushed about the apartment, hoping that the phone would ring again. But he was silent. Apparently, the caller thought that the artist understood him perfectly, but was afraid to continue the conversation. So he missed the opportunity to learn anything about his brother.

On February 2, 1940, Mikhail Koltsov was shot. Efimov recalls that during his lifetime, despite his sharp mind and tongue, his brother even admired Stalin in some way. At least, he absolutely sincerely paid tribute to the imperious, impressive personality of the "Master", as he was called. And he did it not out of fear or servility.

“More than once, with genuine pleasure, bordering on admiration, my brother recounted to me individual remarks, remarks and jokes that he had heard from him. Stalin liked him. And at the same time, Mikhail, due to his “risky” nature, continued to dangerously test his patience. And further - more. Koltsov wrote feuilletons, in comparison with which “The Riddle-Stalin” was an innocent, timid joke,” said Efimov.

In 1939 the Second World War began. Against the backdrop of such cataclysms, the sorrows and misfortunes of "individual people" meant little, Efimov argues.

"But for 'individuals' like me, that didn't make it any easier," he says.

Boris Efimov, Nikolai Dolgorukov. "An old song in a new way!" 1949

Perhaps the cartoonist learned from his brother's experience how not to behave. He himself, as a relative of the "enemy of the people", was waiting for arrest. Nerves gave out, so in the first days of 1939 he went to the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, Yakov Selikh, and directly asked if he should write a statement on his own. They didn't let him go. “We don’t know anything bad about you, except good.” In addition, outside a narrow circle in Moscow, almost no one is aware that the publicist Koltsov and the cartoonist Efimov are brothers. So the public won't notice. But Izvestia also refused to print Efimov. So he nevertheless quit and began to illustrate the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin. To return to the profession, he needed Molotov's personal protectorate.

Lover and Owner

Efimov's personal tragedy was embedded in the political processes of the late 1930s. Nikolai Bukharin was the key figure in the “Gorky murder case” and the subsequent massacre of the old Leninist guard at that moment. Efimov, of course, knew him personally and considered him a man of great erudition and brilliant oratorical talent. Such a "favorite of the party" under Stalin would not have lived long. And the point, of course, was not that the first called on the people to enrich themselves at a good moment, and the second advocated general collectivization and, in fact, the impoverishment of the peasants.

Efimov first met Bukharin back in 1922, when he was the editor of Pravda. Efimov, by sheer chance, personally gave him his caricature, which he tried to publish there. Bukharin appreciated. Some time later, when Yefimov published another collection, one of the still leaders even wrote a laudatory review, where he called him a brilliant master of political caricature.

"He has one remarkable property, which, unfortunately, is not often found: this great artist is at the same time a very intelligent and observant politician."

Caricature

As for his prospects, Bukharin did not flatter himself, Efimov believes. On December 2, 1934, Efimov and other employees of Izvestia were sitting in the editor's office. The telephone on Bukharin's desk rang. After listening to the message and hanging up, Nikolai Bukharin was silent for a while, passed his hand over his forehead and said:

Kirov was killed in Leningrad. “Then he looked at us with unseeing eyes and added in some strange indifferent tone: “Now Koba will shoot us all,” Efimov writes. He called the trial of Bukharin historical in its cynicism.

Nightmare

This was not the only high-profile trial of the century at which the artist was present, and not the only historical figures whom he managed to sketch from nature. He saw both Hitler and Mussolini, made sketches from Goering and Ribbentrop from nature during the Nuremberg Trials, where he was sent along with the Kukryniksy. Even here, Efimov believes, the imprint of the glory of Mikhail Koltsov lay on him.

The artist has received international recognition. Even during the war, his cartoons about the second front were also published in British newspapers, for example, "The Sword of Damocles", which ended up in the Manchester Guardian. Moreover, the content of these cartoons was retold on the radio. The famous collection of cartoons "Hitler and his pack" also gained popularity in the Allied countries. There he portrayed the "Berlin gang": Goering, Hess, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Ley, Rosenberg and, of course, the Fuhrer himself. Readers were explained, for example, that "the ideal Aryan should be tall, slender and blond," accompanied by unflattering caricatures of German leaders.

And in the spring of 1947, Stalin himself became a co-author of one of Efimov's works. Efimov was summoned to the Kremlin, where Andrei Zhdanov met him. He explained that the Boss had an idea to laugh at the desire of the United States to penetrate into the Arctic, since there was supposedly a “Russian danger” from there, and Comrade Stalin immediately remembered the talents of Boris Efimov, whose brother was recently shot for treason.

“I will not hide that at the words “Comrade Stalin remembered you ...” my heart sank. I knew too well that falling into the orbit of memories or attention of Comrade Stalin is mortally dangerous,” the artist recalls.

Boris Efimov, Nikolai Dolgorukov. "The instigators of a new war should remember the shameful end of their predecessors!" N. Bulganin. 1947

Stalin invented the plot of the caricature himself: a heavily armed Eisenhower is approaching the deserted Arctic, and an ordinary American asks the general why he needed such an absurdity. It had to be done immediately.

“I knew that the Master did not like it when his instructions were not followed. When he is informed that the drawing has not been received by the deadline, he will most likely instruct Comrade Beria to "sort it out." And Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria will need no more than forty minutes to knock out of me a confession that I thwarted Comrade Stalin’s assignment on the instructions of American intelligence, in whose service I have been for many years, ”says Yefimov. But he did.

Stalin liked the drawing, even if he made several edits to the text. Efimov was again summoned to the Kremlin to Zhdanov. The latter said that the leader had already called and asked if Efimov had arrived, and Zhdanov lied that Efimov had been waiting in the waiting room for half an hour.

Phantasmagoria, I thought. - Nightmare. Stalin asks Zhdanov about me.

The cartoon "Eisenhower is on the defensive" was published two days later in Pravda.

And yet, despite his awe and even horror before the “Master”, who describes Efimov in such detail and repeatedly in his autobiographical notes, ambition spurred him to complain to Stalin personally in writing when in 1949 he was not appointed to the state award. Everything ended well for the artist, and he received the award. She was far from the last. Having survived the debunking of the cult, and the Khrushchev thaw, and the Brezhnev stagnation, and perestroika, and Yeltsin's reforms, Boris Yefimov was rewarded with this ever-changing state more than once. And although the content of Efimov's caricatures changed with each formation, his style and attention to detail remained unchanged.

Boris Efimov. NATO. 1969

When it's not funny

Boris Efimov headed the Agitplakat Creative and Production Association under the Union of Artists of the USSR for 30 years in a row. It is believed that it was he, together with Denis, Moore, Brodaty, Cheremnykh, Kukryniksy, who created such a phenomenon in world culture as “positive satire”.

In August 2002, the 102-year-old artist headed the department of caricature art of the Russian Academy of Arts, and on his 107th birthday, in 2007, Boris Yefimov was appointed chief artist of the Izvestia newspaper. Until the end of his days, he participated in public life, wrote and drew. Boris Efimov died in the capital at the age of 109. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent a telegram of condolences to his family.

“A peer of the 20th century, Boris Efimovich Efimov, was rightfully considered a classic of caricature,” the document said.

Of course, it was not Dmitry Anatolyevich who came up with the idea of ​​calling Efimov a contemporary of the twentieth century. This nickname has been passed from mouth to mouth for many years.

“We often say: history repeats itself. And it really is repeated, as I think, not only in political events of a large scale, but also in less significant things,” wrote a person who, in his lifetime - or in his three centuries? - Seems to be everything.

Boris Efimov believed that a sense of humor is a precious property of the human character. But it is a hundred times more valuable when people are not at all laughing at all.

Boris Efimovich Efimov

Today the Soviet artist Boris Efimovich Efimov would have turned 115 years old. Such a formulation may seem unusual - where has it been seen that a living person turns so many years old! - if not for the fact that Boris Efimovich passed away, celebrating his 108th birthday. So what could come true, why not? - but, alas, it did not happen.
I happened to meet Boris Efimovich several times. These were quite business meetings, it was about the publication of a dozen and a half of his cartoons in one historical book. Then he was "only" 95 years old. But, frankly, I was interested in talking with a person who seemed to me to be living history. After all, his first caricature - of the Chairman of the State Duma Rodzianko - was published back in 1916 in the illustrated magazine Sun of Russia, which was popular in those years. When I was listing the cartoons that I had selected for publication, one of the first ones I came across was an old caricature of A.F. Kerensky - "Kerensky's attack ... on the workers" from the magazine "Crocodile" for 1922.

It is quite possible that Efimov had not seen her since then, that is, for more than 70 years - and he had drawn more than 40 thousand drawings, caricatures, posters during this time ... - but then he instantly recognized her and nodded his head:
- Yes, this is in connection with the June offensive of 1917 ...
During the Civil War, Efimov drew and published caricatures of Lenin and Trotsky in the Kyiv White Guard newspapers. One of them - he himself told about this - was this: Lenin asks Trotsky - "How many devoted people do we have in our country?" "All!" Trotsky answers. The meaning of the pun is clear: these two traitors, Ilyich and Davidich, betrayed every single one ... :)
Then, in the 1920s, Yefimov managed to make friends with Trotsky, who even wrote a laudatory preface to his first book of drawings. Efimov, in turn, drew friendly cartoons on the leader of the Red Army, like this:

He met with the already expelled, disgraced Trotsky at his home - it was definitely a bold act (Efimov himself was non-party). If you look from the point of view of our knowledge - so directly recklessly bold (although then, perhaps, it did not seem so). It turned out that I now know Lev Davidovich "through one handshake" - which was also amusing. At that meeting, Trotsky said to Yefimov:
- And your brother seems to have joined the Thermidorians.
It was about the journalist Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov, the artist's brother.
“I kept silent,” Efimov wrote about this later. “I thought that it was hardly the time and place to express to the defeated and exiled Trotsky that Koltsov joined the Thermidorians not out of fear or servility, but because, like most members of the party, he believed that the so-called general line of Stalin is more reasonable and necessary for the country than his, Trotsky's, permanent revolution.
By the way, above the desk in Efimov's home office, I was struck by a large oil-painted portrait of Mikhail Koltsov, who, as you know, was shot in 1940 as a "Trotskyite". Strange: while Trotsky considered Koltsov a Thermidorian, Stalin continued to consider him a Trotskyist...
That meeting between Yefimov and Trotsky ended like this: “We went out into the hallway, and then something happened that became a fact of my biography. Trotsky took off his coat and handed it to me. I gasped: “What are you, Lev Davydovich!” - “No, no, put it on." I, worried, barely get my hands into the sleeves, and then, I will not hide, I said: "Have a nice trip, Lev Davydovich!". We hugged and kissed. "
Later, in the 1930s, Boris Efimovich, as he himself wrote, "drew vile caricatures of Bukharin and Trotsky, whom he sincerely respected." He was also well acquainted with Bukharin through his work at Izvestia...
About what already in the years of perestroika he published a note in Ogonyok under the heading "I'm sorry." And then, in an interview, he repeatedly returned to this topic: "Even now I am ashamed of them ... [For] the drawings where I depicted Trotsky, Bukharin, people whom I deeply respected." “Until now, this is my pain. He [Trotsky] favored me, but I could not refuse to draw him, they would have dealt with me right away. I did it reluctantly and imagined Lev Davidovich looking at these caricatures and thinking: well what a bastard!"
I knew all this, but at the same time I really wanted to include a caricature of Bukharin in the form of a "cursed cross between a fox and a pig", according to Vyshinsky, in a book. And I carefully started talking about it, suggested placing it, if necessary, along with a short excerpt from the article "I'm sorry," but Boris Efimovich said, as he cut it off: "No, no! .." (By the way, in the conversation Efimov succinctly remarked : "If this caricature did not exist, then I would not exist").

Then I tried to quickly scroll through the famous drawing from among those selected for publication, where, if you look closely, the same acquaintances of Boris Efimovich - Lev Davidovich and Nikolai Ivanovich writhed in the "Stalin's hedgehog gauntlet" of People's Commissar Yezhov. :)


I thought that, after all, "Steel Hedgehogs" had long since become a fact of history, and it would be strange to hush them up. And for the publication of this laudatory drawing of 1933 - "The Captain of the Land of the Soviets leads us from victory to victory" - Efimov agreed, good-naturedly, albeit with some annoyance, laughing at his sight:
- Well, what happened, happened.

Then I asked Efimov to sign the published book (which I usually never did, but in this case I decided to make an exception for such a "historical" person), and he composed a long inscription in which he listed all his Soviet regalia and titles. What in 1996 looked, to be honest, somewhat lonely - all the same as a magnificent, loud and fearful title of nobility after the abolition of the aristocracy ...
P.S. Here is what he wrote to me then, indicating at the beginning my first and last name: "... to the editor of this volume with a feeling of sincere admiration for the enormous and excellent work that enables our young generation to get a vivid and expressive idea of ​​Russia's past, of complex and unforgettable events in our history.. Many, many thanks on behalf of the older and oldest generation.
Boris Efimov,
contemporary of the twentieth century, People's Artist of the RSFSR and the USSR, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, Hero of Socialist Labor.
January 25, 1996."

Was born on September 28, 1900 in Kiev. Father - Fridland Efim Moiseevich (born in 1860). Mother - Rakhil Savelyevna (born in 1880). The first wife is Koretskaya Rosalia Borisovna (born in 1900). The second wife is Raisa Efimovna Fradkina (born in 1901). Son - Efimov Mikhail Borisovich (born in 1929).

Boris Efimov never thought that he would become an artist, although he loved to draw since childhood. The ability to draw showed up in him early, from the age of 5-6. On paper, he preferred to depict not the surrounding nature - houses, trees, cats or horses, but figures and characters born of his own imagination, the stories of his older brother and the content of the books he read. Very soon, this childish passion was replaced by a conscious desire to transfer to paper the funny in the habits and characters of people.

After his parents moved to Bialystok, Boris was assigned to a real school, where his older brother also studied. There they published a handwritten school magazine together. Brother Mikhail (future publicist and feuilletonist Mikhail Koltsov) edited it, and Boris illustrated it.

The first caricature of Yefimov was published in 1916 in the illustrated magazine Sun of Russia, which was popular in those years. Later, he recalled this event as follows: “As a fifth grade student, using photographs, I made a caricature of Rodzianko, Chairman of the State Duma, and sent him to Petrograd. Seeing the printed drawing, I was shocked ... "

Soon the family moved to Kharkov. The parents stayed, and the brother went to Petrograd. Boris returned to Kyiv, completed his studies at a real school, and in 1917 entered the Kyiv Institute of National Economy. However, after studying there for a year, he moved to the law faculty of Kyiv University.

In 1918, cartoons of Blok, the then-famous actress Yurenev, the director Kugel, and the poet Voznesensky, appeared in the Kiev magazine Spectator. A series of colored drawings "The Conquerors" dates back to the same time - a kind of satirical chronicle of the changing authorities in Kyiv, first German, then White Guard and Petliura.

With the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv, Boris Efimov worked as a secretary of the Editing and Publishing Department in the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs. In June of the same year, his first propaganda drawings were published in the military newspaper "Red Army", equipped with the autograph "Bor. Efimov", which later became world-famous.

Since 1920, Boris Efimov has been working as a cartoonist in the newspapers "Kommunar", "Bolshevik", "Visti", the head of the visual propaganda department of YugROSTA in Odessa. Here he made his first poster on a plywood sheet, on which he depicted Denikin beaten by the Red Army. Later, B. Efimov was the head of the Izosection of the propaganda department of the South-Western Front in Kharkov. Upon his return to Kyiv, he became the head of the art and poster department Kyiv - UkrROSTA. In parallel, he collaborated with the newspapers "Kyiv Proletarian" and "Proletarskaya Pravda".

Best of the day

In 1922 Boris Efimov moved to Moscow. Since then, his works began to be published on the pages of Rabochaya Gazeta, Krokodil, Pravda, Izvestia, Ogonyok, Searchlight and many other publications, published in separate collections and albums. During these years, political satire became his main specialization. The "heroes" of his cartoons were: in the 1920s, many Western politicians - Hughes, Daladier, Chamberlain; in the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler, Mussolini, Goering and Goebbels, whom he invariably portrayed as a lame monkey; in subsequent years - Churchill, Truman and others. Other caricatures evoked such a violent reaction from the characters depicted on them that it came to diplomatic protests.

In the 1930s, the albums of cartoons "Face of the Enemy" (1931), "Caricature in the Defense Service of the USSR" (1931), "Political Cartoons" (1931), "A Way Out Will Be Found" (1932), "Political Cartoons" were published. (1935), "Fascism is the enemy of the peoples" (1937), "Warmongers" (1938), "Fascist interventionists in Spain" (1938).

The "lethal force" of Yefimov's cartoons was fully manifested during the war years. His works were published in those years on the pages of Krasnaya Zvezda, Frontline Illustration, as well as in front-line, army, divisional newspapers and even on leaflets that were scattered behind the front line and called on enemy soldiers to surrender. In search of plots for his works, Boris Efimov repeatedly went to the army.

During the war years, he actively worked in the field of posters. Boris Efimov was among those Soviet writers and artists (Moor, Denis, Kukryniksy and others) who, already on the sixth day of the German attack on the USSR, created the TASS Windows workshop. As in the years of the civil war, posters made immediately upon receipt of reports from the front or the latest international communications were hung out on the streets of Moscow, instilling faith in the Victory even in the most difficult days. Then "Windows" were replicated and produced in the rear - Pyatigorsk, Tbilisi, Tyumen.

Boris Efimov's merits during the Great Patriotic War were awarded medals "For the Defense of Moscow" and "For the Victory over Germany".

In the post-war period, Boris Efimov continued to work actively in a variety of genres. In 1948, a collection of his cartoons "Mr. Dollar" was published, and in 1950 - an album of drawings "For a lasting peace, against warmongers."

In 1954 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, in 1957 - a member of the board of the Union of Artists of the USSR, in 1958 he was awarded the title of "People's Artist of the RSFSR", and in 1967 - "People's Artist of the USSR". Since 1932 he has been a member of the Union of Artists. He was repeatedly elected a member of the board and secretary of the Union of Artists of the USSR.

Since 1965 and for almost 30 years, Boris Efimov headed the Creative and Production Association "Agitplakat" under the Union of Artists of the USSR as the editor-in-chief, while remaining one of its most active authors.

In total, over the years of his creative activity, Boris Yefimov created tens of thousands of political cartoons, propaganda posters, humorous drawings, illustrations, cartoons, as well as easel series of satirical drawings for zonal, group and all-Union art exhibitions. Dozens of satirical albums were published, as well as a number of memoir books, stories, essays, studies on the history and theory of the art of caricature. Among them: "40 years. Notes of a satirical artist", "Work, memories, meetings", "Stories about satirical artists", "I want to tell", "Basic understanding of caricature", "In my opinion", "Unfictional stories "," To schoolchildren about caricature and cartoonists "," Tales of an old Muscovite "," A peer of the century "," My century "and others.

B. Yefimov - Hero of Socialist Labor, three times Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (1950, 1951, 1972), Academician of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, then - of the Russian Academy of Arts. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, the Order of the Badge of Honor, the Bulgarian Order of Cyril and Methodius, I degree, and many other domestic and foreign awards.

Boris Yefimov met the year 2000 - the year of the 55th anniversary of the Great Victory - the year of his 100th anniversary, still in love with life, beauty, books, theater, sports, a company of friends, a good joke, a good anecdote.

Laws of good health Yuri Mikhailovich Ivanov

The system of the artist Boris Efimov

14. VEINS OF THE UPPER LIMB. SYSTEM OF THE LOWER CAVA VEIN. THE PORTAL VEIN SYSTEM These veins are represented by deep and superficial veins. The palmar digital veins flow into the superficial palmar venous arch (arcus venosus palmaris superficialis).