Backing the USSR
Mark Bryant on the work of Soviet cartoonists engaged in the epic struggle against Nazi Germany.
In October 2008 the Russian cartoonist Boris Efimov died at the age of 108 after nearly 80 years as a professional artist. Incredibly, Efimov began work in 1919, two years after the birth of the Soviet Union, and continued to draw almost to the end of his life. Perhaps his period of greatest fame and creativity came during the Second World War (known as the Great Patriotic War in the USSR), when he served the Soviet war machine alongside many other celebrated political cartoonists and caricaturists, including ‘Deni’ (Viktor Denisov) and the three artists who drew under the collective pseudonym ‘Kukryniksi’.
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