Talk: Communism’s Cartoonist Boris Efimov & the World He Made

City University of London and Centre for Modern History invites to join the talk with Stephen Norris from the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University. Norris will speak on his current research project, “Communism’s Cartoonist: Boris Efimov and the Soviet Century,” a biography of the Soviet cartoonist Boris Efimov (1900-2008).

Efimov began publishing pro-Bolshevik cartoons as a teenager before he moved to Moscow and worked as a political caricaturist for the newspaper Izvestiia and the satirical journal Krokodil from 1922 until 1991. He estimated that he published 30,000+ political cartoons over the course of his astonishing career.

His drawings, therefore, help us reconstruct a world he created and the worldview he attempted to foster, both connected to the project of creating Soviet socialism. Efimov was also a careful curator of his own work and his life story. This talk will explore Efimov’s cartoons, their significance within Soviet culture, and the ways the cartoonist himself attempted to construct his life story, allowing us to reconsider the entire Soviet project.

The talk will be in English.