The Century's Son

99-year-old cartoonist Boris Yefimov fears only one thing in life: that his red-haired cat Chubaysik (named for the red-haired politician

he despises, Anatoly Chubais) will take advantage of Yefimov’s poor sight and run out of the apartment when the door is opened to yet another journalist. Anything else he can live with.

Indeed, what else is left for Yefimov to fear? In 1938 he lost his beloved brother Mikhail at the hands of Stalin’s hangmen. And in December 1991, he lost the USSR—the country he had served all his life with his art

Born in 1900, Boris Yefimov justly calls himself the Son of Our Century. When WWI broke out, Yefimov was 14. When Hitler attacked the USSR, he

was 41 When Khrushchev was sacked, Yefimov was 64.

As a senior Soviet political cartoonist for decades, Yefimov met many of this century’s most influential Russians: Lenin’s sister Maria Ulyanova, Andrei Zhdanov, Leon Trotsky ... He drew cartoons at Nuremburg, sketched some of the first anti-Western images of the Cold War and was in China in the mid-1960s, during the time of the Sino-Soviet split.

Yefimov sat down to talk with Russian Life Editor Mikhail Ivanov about a cartoon he drew of Yugoslav leader Josef Broz Tito fifty years ago, on Stalin’s direct orders. But the interview soon turned into a monologue full of rare, first-hand stories.

 

Russian Life: Boris Yefimovich, Russian TV recently showed your reminiscences on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the split between the USSR and Yugoslavia in 1949 ...

Boris Yefimov: Yeah, now for some reason they recalled it. Though I don’t know why we need to recall this today? Just to show that we were also at some point at odds with Yugoslavia?!

 

RL: You must have been watching with interest the news on the events in Yugoslavia ...

BY: Well, I can’t watch TV anymore because of poor eyesight, but I have heard all this news. What I can say ... My heart is breaking when I think that somebody destroyed such a beautiful, such a good country which has been close to us historically and throughout WWII ... I just couldn’t stand listening to the news from Yugoslavia. It is even terrible to imagine Belgrade in ruins—such a nice, cozy, bright city.

RL: Have you been there?

BY: Of course. The first time I was there was a few months after the liberation in 1945. The war had just ended and, as a military corespondent for Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, I began touring the liberated countries ... So I was in Belgrade in the summer of 1945 and I met the legendary Marshal Tito, the people’s hero. He invited us and treated us to lunch. It was all beautiful and joyful, it was on the heels of our common victory.

RL: Who was behind this anti-Tito cartoon at the top?

BY: Well, of course, it came from the Owner (Khozyain) himself as we called him, from Koba [Stalin’s nickname from before the revolution – Ed.].

RL: Where was the cartoon on Tito published?

BY: I was working in Izvestia but the first cartoon on Tito was printed in Pravda. The then editor of Pravda Leonid Ilyichyov [who later became a famous politician — Ed.] called me and said: “Yefimov, look, we urgently need a cartoon on Tito.”

“What do you mean on Tito?! On this legendary marshal?!”

“We need a cartoon called ‘turncoat.’ So portray him like a turncoat defecting from the socialist camp to the imperialists.”

So, I drew him running from socialism to the imperialists, where he is greeted by the bankers of Wall Street.

RL: What was your attitude to Tito before you were ordered to draw his cartoon?

BY: Well, I felt admiration. He was a people’s hero, a marshal who countered 7 or 8 offensives by Hitler’s troops. Tito was the head of the resistance in Serbia ... I remember how we arrived in Belgrade during the inauguration of a big exhibition dedicated to the war and to the Serbian partisans’ resistance to Hitler’s divisions. They withstood Hitler’s attacks, remember? I recall us arriving to the building of Skupschina, where they exhibited the seized trophies; Tito himself was in full military uniform. I stared at him like at a hero.

He made a charming impression on me, he was a handsome, strong-willed man. I felt, well, veneration. I remember how I saw one short yet very laconic slogan on all houses: only four letters “Tito,” with an exclamation point. That was enough then. It’s a long story to tell how we were greeted back then as Russian officers, how they fed us for free and offered us drink. They didn’t even charge us a fare on trams. Back then the attitude toward the Soviet Union’s Red Army was very positive. I was wearing the uniform of a major then.

RL: So what did you feel when Ilyichyov ordered this Tito cartoon?

BY: I was stunned, flabbergasted, amazed ...

RL: Did you have to hold back so as to silence your own feelings?

BY: You are a very naive young man. Who would reckon with our feelings?! The order was a cartoon by the next morning, period! You can’t imagine what it felt like to live back then.

RL: Well, I lived under Brezhnev ...

BY: (Laughter) ... Oh, pl-e-ase. How can you compare?!

RL: But deep down you surely felt regret and amazement?

BY: Sure, how could it be? Such a legendary marshal — and then all of a sudden “a turncoat”?! “Tito-hangman,” “Tito-fascist” ... “Hitler’s acolyte,” “servant of US imperialism,” and on and on. They kept ordering more of those.

RL: Did Ilyichyov at least take the trouble to explain to you the reasons for such an abrupt U-turn?

BY: He probably didn’t have a clue himself. He just told me: “Portray him as a turncoat. Good luck!” Though later he did make a critical observation after the cartoon was published, criticizing me for showing Tito as too handsome a man. To which I said: “Well, he was a handsome man in the flesh.” And in the future, my cartoons were close to the original: he had a strong-willed, sculptured face of a patrician ...

After Khrushchev patched up our relations with Yugoslavia ... I was told to come to see two Yugoslav cartoonists who would love to meet me. After the eating and drinking and usual small talk, one of the cartoonists told me: “Eh-eh, I do remember your drawing cartoons of comrade Tito.”

I said: “Yes I did, but I was not the only one.”

“But I do remember how YOU drew Tito as a little dog.”

I said: “Maybe, I don’t remember” (laughter) ...

RL: I wonder if the Yugoslav cartoonists ever paid Stalin back?

BY: I saw only one, but it was great. The Yugoslav newspaper Politika showed Karl Marx sitting at his desk writing Kapital with Stalin’s portrait hanging behind him on the wall. That was quite a caustic cartoon, not rude but ironic.

RL: What do you think would happen if you had refused to draw Tito’s cartoon? Say, you had told them: sorry, I can’t go against myself.

BY: It wouldn’t occur to me. What are you thinking to yourself? You are reasoning from the heights of 1999, and that was in 1949, fifty years ago, when nobody would think about it! Plus, frankly, a political cartoonist needs to react immediately to events. If the editor of Pravda tells you ... And, you know what Pravda was then, not like now. Pravda was just another branch of power. Whatever was printed in Pravda came into force like law. If some Soviet VIP was portrayed in Pravda in a negative light, boy, was he in trouble! And for simple mortals, that was simply the end! If there was a negative critique of some theater play, forget it ... The same with a negative book review. It was not comme il faut to argue with Pravda.

Under Boris Tal, Izvestia’s deputy editor-in-chief, Pravda and Izvestia were at odds over the new jazz program of our popular singer Leonid Utyosov. I don’t remember which one was bashing Utyosov, but polemics flared up between the two papers! At the end of the day, Boris Tal turned out to be a trotskyite. Nobody could fathom how he could become a trotskyite in such a short period of time. But he was shortly arrested and shot. Such were the mores back then ...

And you ask me why didn’t I say that I don’t want to do draw a cartoon on Tito? ... In that case, it would have been very easy to accuse me of, say, being a trotskyite.

RL: Why so?

BY: Because everybody knew I was friendly with Trotsky in the 1920s. He wrote a preface to my first album of cartoons, which saw the light of day in 1924. Trotsky, who, like Stalin, loved cartoons, summoned me when he was still a Politburo member and chairman of the Revolutionary Council of the Republic and People’s Commissar for the Army and the Fleet. By then, however, it already looked like he was losing the internal party war—you know how it all ended ...

He got up from his desk to meet me, was very polite and uttered the phrase which I heard quite often back then: “Oh, but you are so young?” To which I replied with a well-prepared answer: “When you were my age, Lev Davydovich, you already had two escapes from exile on your record.”

RL: Did he like the answer?

BY: Oh, yes. And he said: “And you at your age have lots of good cartoons behind you. I assume you want to know my opinion, so in what form would you like to have it?” We settled for a preface.

Two years later he brought me an article he had written. I took it to the editor of Izvestia, Yuri Steklov. Steklov was in a quandary—he didn’t want to quarrel with Trotsky and refuse to print it. But to print it would vex Stalin. So he printed and perished as a result. Steklov was arrested (he was over 60!) and died in the camps. Such was the irony: I who was friendly with Trotsky and whom Trotsky wrote a laudatory preface for, survived.

RL: How did you live through the arrest of your brother, Mikhail Koltsov, and why did Stalin turn against him? Stalin personally sent him to Spain to cover the Civil War for Pravda in 1936, didn’t he?

BY: My brother was a very talented journalist who had a whirlwind career that reached its peak after his Spanish dispatches. Millions of Soviet readers read his articles from Spain and Koltsov became very popular. Too popular for Stalin. By the way, in Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, there is a direct reference to my brother. Hemingway mentions “a certain Russian journalist of small height.” Hemingway wrote that he never met a man with such a clear mind, such an inner dignity, audacity and wit. But Stalin was jealous that anyone’s popularity might overshadow his. Shortly before Mikhail’s arrest, Stalin invited Mikhail to talk to him about the Spanish Civil War. Stalin sarcastically called Mikhail “Don Miguel,” like the Spaniards did. Then Mikhail got a hint of his future death in a kafkaesque dialogue: Stalin asked him whether he had a gun and expressed the hope that Mikhail would not use it to shoot himself. An odd conversation, isn’t it? In 1938, my brother was arrested. After spending 13 months in Beria’s torture chambers, he was shot in 1940 in Lefortovo prison. [Koltsov was actually sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, but was then summarily shot in January 1940.]

RL: How come you survived?

BY: Under all the unwritten laws of the time, I was sure to be arrested either the same day or the very next day. I packed all my things. But no one came to arrest me. I was amazed. But then I said, if so, then Thank God! Later I found out that the NKVD had concocted a file on me. Simply by being Mikhail’s brother, I surely knew of his “anti-Soviet spying activities.” So why didn’t I report on it?! But Stalin said in his Georgian accent: “N-e-e trogat!” [“Don’t touch him!” – Ed.] First, I know that Stalin liked my cartoons. And he was our master, the master of a tsardom of 1⁄6 of the earth. And he did need cartoonists and he liked me. So, he probably wanted to keep me just in case I would come in handy ... and I did come in handy.

RL: Could you cite any examples?

BY: The best example is hanging up there on the wall. This is the cartoon which Stalin ordered from me via Zhdanov. Zhdanov summoned me in 1947. It was the declaration of Cold War in the form of a cartoon, so to speak. It was my second cartoon ever on our allies.

Andrei Alexandrovich, polite as usual, invited me to take a seat. “You must have seen information in the press that US military forces are penetrating the Arctic whence, as they claim, there is a Russian threat? Comrade Stalin said that one needs to ‘treat this with laughter.’ So Comrade Stalin remembered you.”

I felt a cold sweat down my spine. To attract Stalin’s attention was a lethal danger!

“Comrade Stalin,” Zhdanov continued, “sees the cartoon approximately as follows: General Eisenhower with his troops is making headway to the Arctic, and next to him stands a simple American who asks him: ‘What’s the matter, general, why such stormy activities in this depopulated area?!’ To which Eisenhower responds: ‘Don’t you see that the Russians threaten us from here?’ Anyway, something like that. You figure it out ...”

And I said, “Why figure out something else, Andrei Alexandrovich?! This is great, just what we need. If you allow me, I will draw it just that way.”

“OK, do it, it’s up to you, this is what I will report to Comrade Stalin.”

“O-o-ps Andrei Alexandrovich, just one question: when do you need this?”

“Well, don’t rush on it ... no sweat. But, on the other hand, don’t drag on too much.”

I was at a loss and thought, what the hell could this mean? If I drew the cartoon by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, they may say: “Eh-eh, he rushed things up, he didn’t realize the importance of Comrade Stalin’s assignment and thus did a sloppy job.” No, too dangerous. But then if I do it in three days, they may say: “He dragged it out and didn’t grasp the urgency of Comrade Stalin’s assignment.” This is even more dangerous. So I chose the golden middle. I decided not to work on it that same day. The following morning I would do a rough drawing, and on the next day I’d polish it in ink and call to tell them it is ready.

So, the next morning I drew in pencil a rough sketch portraying Eisenhower peering into his binoculars at the North Pole, riding a Willys [wartime slang for a jeep designed by the Willys-Overland Corp.], with airplanes, tanks and cannons stockpiled behind him. And next to him —as per Stalin’s order—stood “a simple American” wearing a hat. O-o-ops—I forgot—and what about the Russian danger? Stalin’s idea flashed through my mind. “To treat this with laughter” ... Fine— Why are you laughing?

RL: Sorry, you just tell it all in such humorous way ... Though, I guess, it’s a macabre laughter through tears.

BY: Rest assured that it wasn’t fun for me. So, I drew a chukchi hut with a fox on it, a reindeer, a polar bear and adult and child Eskimos, holding a then popular brand of ice-cream “Eskimo.” Then I drew a penguin and a moose. They are all staring in amazement at Eisenhower: “what’s with this Russian danger?!” Then I took a break, but a phone call helped me to come to my senses: “Comrade Yefimov? Hold on, Comrade Stalin is on the phone.” ... I got up from my chair. A pause, then a characteristic little cough ... He would never say “hello”—why waste his time on it?

“Comrade Zhdanov spoke with you about one satirical thing, didn’t he? Do you know what I am talking about?”

”Yes, I do, Comrade Stalin.”

“You are to draw one personality there. You know whom I am talking about?”

“Yes, I do, comrade Stalin.”

“So, this personality needs to be portrayed armed to the teeth, as we say: tanks, cannons, airplanes and all. You got me?”

... An idea crossed my mind, why not tell him “Comrade Stalin, this is exactly the way I have already drawn it; I somehow guessed it myself.” But, you know, I thought better of it and answered instead: “I understand you, comrade Stalin.”

“When can we get this thing?”

“I was told not to rush things up ...”

“We would like to get it tonight by 6 p.m.”

... I looked at my watch: 3:30 p.m. ... A cold shiver went down my spine. This was when I thought, “That’s the end of it.”

“You’ll get it, Comrade Stalin,” I said with resignation.

By some miracle, in two-and-a-half hours I finished a cartoon which would normally take two days. I was like a chess player who found himself in a severe time deficit. But a chess player can at least lose one game only to win the next. But in my case it was a matter of life and death. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that, if I were not done by the time Stalin’s courier came to pick up the drawing, then Comrade Stalin, in typical fashion, would charge Comrade Beria to figure it out why his order was not fulfilled. And it would take Comrade Beria no more than 40 minutes to make me admit that I screwed up Comrade Stalin’s assignment on orders from the US intelligence. Then the “good” old scenario: I end up in Beria’s hands; the family gets put behind bars, or in the camps. In short, I am all set.

But, by some miracle, I made it. I even wrote a caption: “Don’t you see! One of our enemies is ready to launch a hand grenade at us” (meaning the ice cream the Eskimos held). On the final version, Stalin crossed out my caption and replaced it with a simple, businesslike: “It is precisely from here that America’s freedom is threatened.”

The very next day all was quiet. Then, a phone call: “Comrade Zhdanov asks you to come to the Central Committee.” I was at a loss: if they liked it, why call me? If not, then they could call in somebody else, but the answer was simple: there must be corrections. Geez! Maybe Stalin thought that Eisenhower didn’t look real to life. Maybe the polar lights were not natural; before the revolution, Stalin had been exiled to the Turukhansky region—he saw the polar lights there. Luckily Stalin just made some minor corrections as Zhdanov told me. All these corrections are preserved in Stalin’s handwriting, some written with his famous red pencil. For example, Stalin asked that the word “just” be replaced by “precisely” in the caption. Fantastic stuff! Stalin, who deals with global problems, focuses his mind on such details ...

This cartoon, taking into account Stalin’s correction, was published two days later in Pravda under the headline “Eisenhower defends himself.” I must note that some picky readers made caustic remarks on the penguins in the Arctic, where they don’t belong. But as soon as it became known that the cartoon was approved by the Master, they bit their tongue; the clumsy presence of penguins in the North Pole was thus endorsed at the highest level. And the cartoon went down in the history of the Cold War as one of the first satirical arrows targeting our former allies in the Anti-Hitler coalition.

RL: So, he liked it?

BY: Yes, he did ... There was an earlier episode in my life related to Stalin. In the fall of 1937, I was sick and stayed at home with a nasty cold. All of a sudden a phone call woke me up. Pravda’s Editor-in-Chief Lev Mekhlis was calling. Why did such a scary man need me?

“Yefimov!” he yelled.

“Yes, Lev Zhakharovich.”

“Can you make it to the editorial head quarters today?”

“Well, of course, though I am a bit sick ... ”

“What? You can’t make it?! Too bad. I wanted to tell you about what He said.”

There was no need to ask who this “He” was ... So, I asked, “Anything unpleasant, Lev Zakharovich?”

“When He has something to say, it is always pleasant, pleasant for work’s sake. You got me?”

“Yes, Lev Zakharovich.” And then I burst into a fit of cough.

“OK, fine, come to see me tomorrow at 11 am.

The next day he said, “You know what: He noticed that when you draw Japanese Imperialist-Samurais, you portray them with huge teeth hanging out of their mouth. So, you needn’t do this as it insults national feelings of every Japanese person.”

“I got you Lev Zakharovich, no more teeth.”

So what would you say after that? Was Stalin interested in cartoons or not?

RL: Mekhlis was quite a political figure, his ashes were even buried near the Kremlin wall, right? You worked under his tenure. What role did he play in the history of our country? How is it that Stalin brought Mekhlis so close to him?

BY: This outstanding anti-Semite [Stalin] didn’t pay attention to the fact that Mekhlis was a Jew. Stalin was completely free of such “national narrowness.” He jailed and shot with equal pleasure Russians, Jews, Georgians, Poles, Latvians, Ukrainians, anyone. I personally knew Lev Mekhlis. He was a very tough and cruel man. He rose after Stalin recruited him as a secretary. In those days, before lighting his pipe Stalin would call on Lev Zakharovich with the now famous phrase: “Comrade Mekhlis, matches!”

Shortly thereafter, Stalin sent Mekhlis to work in Pravda as managing editor when the “Father of the People” thought it was time to clear Pravda of Nikolai Bukharin and Maria Ulyanova. The terrible things I told you about Pravda were all implemented under Mekhlis. He turned the paper into an absolute arbiter in all fields: politics, art, whatever. He was furious when someone dared to contradict Pravda: if Pravda says the program is good, it’s good; if Pravda says it’s bad, it’s bad! The final stage of Mekhlis’ career was the Ministry of State Control and he died in this ministerial post in 1952. I think people like Mekhlis will show up in any epoch in a nation where there is a dictatorship. They are a logical creation of those whom they serve. Whenever there is a Stalin, a Mekhlis will follow, regardless of the nationality he writes in his questionnaire.

RL: In your book My Century, published last year, you mention an early cartoon you did on Stalin ... How did you create it and did Stalin see it?

BY: Maybe he saw it, maybe his aide Ivan Tovstukha didn’t show it to him, realizing that it is a “no go” and that he, Tovstukha, could only get in trouble as a result.

RL: Did you rescue the cartoon or destroy it just in case?

BY: I don’t remember whether I destroyed it but, of course, this cartoon didn’t survive the time. It was stored in the archives of the magazine I submitted it to.  In any case, there wasn’t anything super-ridiculous about it. It was just a caricature of Stalin’s traits, like in any cartoon. He had a low forehead, so I drew it even lower. He had narrow eyes; I made them even narrower. A huge moustache, big boots—all exaggerated. When they were hesitant about publishing it at Projector magazine, they decided to show it to Maria Ulyanova [Lenin’s sister]. We came to visit her. She looked at it and didn’t laugh, smile or anything. She just stared at the drawing and said: “He has some kind of a fox-like muzzle here. You know what? Let us send it to the Central Committee, to Tovstukha.”

Later the cartoon was sent back by Tovstukha with the inscription, “unfit for print.” Many years later, I would draw Stalin many times, but not in cartoons, only in portraits, with veneration, on the Soviet flag etc., like everyone.

RL: OK, enough of Stalin. Let’s go back to the very first years of your artistic career. What was your very first cartoon printed?

BY: The one of the tsarist Duma Chairman Mikhail Rodzyanko.

RL: What was the punch line, how did you poke fun at him?

BY: Well, I didn’t really poke fun at him; it was a rather friendly cartoon. I didn’t really caricature him too much. Rodzyanko was quite a handsome, tall man, impressive and popular enough. Some people even called him the future president of Russia. I didn’t preserve the cartoon unfortunately. It was printed back then in the very popular Sun of Russia (“Solntse Rossii”), a prestigious illustrated magazine. It was in 1916, a year of very tumultuous events. Back then, Russia went through endless cabinet reshuffles not unlike today’s shake-ups. The tsar changed ministers and premiers like they were gloves. All this was done under pressure from Grigory Rasputin, who enjoyed limitless authority with the tsar’s family. He called the tsarina “mommy” and the tsar “pappy.” And he was dictating whom to appoint as minister. Of course he was charging these ministers big money for this. It would seem to me that these things should be left to the past, but now we see some appalling analogies ...

RL: Like what?

BY: Some people of adventurist character somehow gained access to power. There is even such a word “camarilla” [in common use in the Russian press, from the Spanish, meaning the palace insiders – Ed.] in common use. And everybody sees that there is such a camarilla around the Kremlin, around the president. He has all the prerogatives, mores and habits of a monarch. This is a real court, indeed. Just like at a tsar’s court, they have behind-the-stage intrigues, some people are falling in disgrace, others are cuddled and cajoled, new favorites emerge and submerge and on and on. All these are typical traits and mores of a court.

RL: You, who lived under Rasputin ... can you name a modern day Rasputin?

BY: Well, each epoch has one. It seemed to us we had Boris Berezovsky. And now all of a sudden we hear of a new name—Roman Abramovich—who the hell is he? Was he drawn in by Berezovsky? Did he take over for Berezovsky, this Roman Abramovich? I don’t know. This is a really strange, weird combination.

RL: Did you have favorite heroes of your cartoons?

BY: First of all, I need to mention Trotsky. I was drawing him when he was still at the peak of his glory, when he was one of the greatest and most authoritative persons in the country, so my cartoons then were very friendly. Of course, back then I didn’t know that I would shortly have to portray him in a different light, as an enemy of the people. But anything could happen. When you are a political cartoonist, you have to keep pace with politics.

... I drew [Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim] Litvinov quite often, also full of respect for him. Georgy Chicherin, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, People’s Commissar for Education Anatoly Lunacharsky. I drew the popular poet Vladimir Mayakovsky forty-plus times. We traveled to Paris together ... Once I drew a cartoon of Konstantin Stanislavsky alongside the US theater producer Yurok, who had organized the tour of the MKhAT theater to the US. Yurok was very pleased with the cartoon and sneaked a $50 note into my palm, forcing me to accept it. I also drew cartoons of Nikolai Bukharin—it was printed in the Izvestia—it was very goodhearted cartoon, rather a smile than a laughter, a friendly cartoon.

RL: So, you met Bukharin personally?

BY: Oh, many times. In 1922 I left my native Kiev and moved to Moscow on the advice of my elder brother Mikhail. Shortly after my arrival in Moscow, I drew a cartoon of one of the leaders of the Second International, Emil Wanderweld, and submitted it to Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin. He looked at it, seemed pleased and said to his Managing Editor, Maria Ulyanova: “What do you say, I guess we could publish this thing, no?” Then I heard a secretary calling Maria Ilyinichna: “It’s the Kremlin for you.” She quickly picked up the phone: “Is it you, Volodya?” I thought, “My God! Back in Kiev, where I saw Civil War battles raging between Reds and Whites, I never could have thought that someday I would hear with my own ears Maria Ulyanova talk to Lenin! ...”

RL: And whom did you hate most of all your models?

BY: Of course, I nurtured antipathy for our adversaries and enemies, such as British Prime Minister [Neville] Chamberlain. I remember how Chamberlain mentioned my cartoons in a fit of rage in his official note to the Soviet government—a good compliment from a class enemy, right? To say nothing of Hitler, Goering, Rosenberg, Ribbentrop and others. We put all our hatred and wrath into our cartoons on these criminals; we meant to ridicule, to bash them, to show all their cruelty and meanness. I got a close look at them all when they were sitting on the bench at Nuremberg.

RL: I guess, during the war, you witnessed with your own eyes what these war criminals had done, no?

BY: Well, I had been on many fronts. In the first place on the Moscow front; I have a Medal for the Defense of Moscow. It is nothing to sneeze at. It is a very honorable award and I am more proud of it than of any of my other nine medals ... In 1944, I was in Poland. The writer Vasily Grossman and I got to Warsaw and learned there would not be a storming of Warsaw and no one could ask questions about it. We both came to the conclusion that it was for political, not military reasons that Stalin didn’t want to storm Warsaw. I also saw the terrible concentration camps. We toured Majdanek and Treblinka.

Grossman and I worked together then at Krasnaya Zvezda, as war correspondents. Many of Grossman’s essays from that time even hold up today as literary masterpieces. And he was highly valued in the Red Army. When we saw Hitler’s atrocities at Treblinka, Grossman wrote his brilliant essay “The Hell of Treblinka.” I could see how Grossman was burning up inside at the sight of the barbarian atrocities of the Holocaust. Yet he wrote unpolished truth about the war. His short novel, For the Just Cause, was criticized in Pravda. He himself was not repressed, but his later novel, Life and Fate, was. Our gray ideologist [Mikhail] Suslov told him this novel of his could only be published in the Soviet Union in 200 years. But the high ranking party boss was wrong. It was published in 1990. Unfortunately Grossman was already dead by then.

RL: How would you respond to people who might accuse you and representatives of your generation, saying that by your songs, articles and drawings you contributed one way or another to the reinforcement of Stalin’s dictatorship?

BY: Well, I don’t recall such direct, and excuse me, naive questions. I didn’t think that I reinforced Stalin’s regime by my cartoons ... It is not easy to give a simple unequivocal answer to such a question. One the one hand, there was the inner understanding of what is allowed and what is not. An understanding that there are topics which one should touch upon very carefully, right? And this is quite natural for an artist, I repeat, who was connected with the press, who doesn’t draw just for the sake of seeing his work on a wall. He is drawing to see this in print, right? And if he wants this to be published, then he must realize that not everything will be published ... You know, I had no grounds to join the dissidents. And, frankly, nor did I have the desire. Whom would benefit from this action of mine? Or whom would I vex with it? I worked using my common sense, i.e. I responded to events the way they were interpreted not only by me, but also officially. Because otherwise there would be no demand for my profession. Otherwise I would need just to stay home and draw for myself and my wife. But I am a professional political cartoonist, whose profession by birth so to speak is to be in touch with events.

RL: Do you envy the creative freedom of the younger generation: no more Stalin around, no severe editors or censors?

BY: Of course, one can only praise the fact that an artist can now freely draw anything the way he sees and feels it, without fearing anyone. But as regards cartoons, what has been printed recently in lieu of political cartoons is horrible, illiterate and untalented. We regarded cartoons as meaningful, targeted drawings, acute and sharp. We can’t even talk of creative level; there isn’t one.

RL: Why was this artistic level lost?

BY: I mark it up to the whole atmosphere in the country, where everything is in crisis. So why should cartoons be spared by the crisis?! We have no clues about who is right, who is wrong. It is all so messy, so tumultuous. Whom should one poke fun at? Yeltsin, Yavlinsky?! ... We are completely at a loss. A cartoon needs a clear-cut direction. A cartoon was quite pertinent during the Civil War. We knew: here are the Reds, they are for Soviet power; there are the Whites who are against us. So the cartoon was aimed at the enemies of Soviet power ... You see, one needs to poke fun at what exists objectively, at pernicious people and pernicious ideas ... Something concrete and not just in general—e.g. contract killings are a bad thing. A cartoon needs to be concrete; it needs to hit something and not just state facts. Well, you could do a cartoon on Zhirinovsky and his clownish tricks, but this would be too easy. Is he our enemy? No ... A cartoon must hit the enemy.

....You know what? Zyuganov is asking for a cartoon, really. Because of his peculiar sort of narrowness, the elements of extremism in his politics or his behavior ....

RL: And what is so caricature-like about Zyuganov?

BY: Well, his pedantism. He rehearses the same things in the same formulas. This is too monotone, too schematic. I think as a political orator he lacks some sort of charm to get his point across.

RL: So you’re saying he is nowhere near the eloquence of Leon Trotsky?

BY: Oh, plea-a-se ... What are you talking about?! Such orators as Trotsky lived only in the epoch of the French Revolution. Everybody saw and realized that. That might, that impact on the audience, that thunderous style—only Trotsky possessed it. He was a very strong speaker.

RL: So today’s communists can’t line up such speakers?

BY: Trotsky’s speaking gift was many-fold stronger. Crowds in the thousands were mesmerized by his speech. I remember how he was at the head of the Red Army when he arrived in Kiev during the Civil War. It was like thunder ....

RL: What about Yeltsin’s speaking abilities ?

BY: Well, don’t you see it yourself?! Of late I simply can’t stand listening to him—he speaks so slowly and with such pain. The younger Yeltsin and today’s Yeltsin are incomparable. Now he is a sick man ...

RL: But then you are much older than he is and yet you sound much, much better ... So how have you managed to remain so energetic ? You said you will turn 99 this September?

BY: I have been asked this question so often that I have a well-honed answer. Here is an old Caucasian story.

At a party in the Caucasus they were celebrating the birthday of a elder in a very solemn atmosphere. Guests asked him questions about his life and he told them that all his life he observed moderation in everything: he never drank, never smoked and took it easy with women; he got up early and breathed fresh air, he refrained from excessive food, he went to bed early and got up early. In short, he led a healthy lifestyle, which he said contributed to his long life.

Then, in the middle of this solemn ceremony all the guests heard a terrible noise from the corridor. Somebody yells: “Stop this hooliganism, who is making this noise?!” And the elder says, “Oh, don’t pay any attention to it. It is just that old drunkard, that hooligan, inveterate smoker, womanizer and glutton, the shame of his family ... ” “Who?” someone asks. “My elder brother,” the man replies.

The morale is clear. You needn’t do anything. I never refused anything to myself. Well, I didn’t smoke, but just because I hate this stuff. But I never turn down a glass, even today. And in other respects I allowed myself everything. I always ate as much as I wanted and what I wanted, no diet or anything. Maybe this is one of the reasons for my longevity, maybe not.

RL: Maybe you simply tried to enjoy life no matter what?

BY: Well, my dear, life hasn’t always brought me joy. I lived through many disasters and losses ... But, as most people, I wanted to believe that things would be better and not so desperate. I tried to think about my relatives. Sometimes I am asked, how is it that you continued to serve Soviet power after Stalin liquidated your only beloved brother?! First, I believed that I didn’t serve Stalin but rather the Soviet power, which I sided with when I was young man and served all these years. But not Stalin personally.

And then, frankly speaking, what would these guys want me to do? To demonstrate my refusal to work, to renounce my work as an artist, to go on strike? First, don’t be naïve! I would not live in freedom long after this. I would join my brother. So what would I achieve with this? And then, OK, I can be this man of principles and die on the pyre like Giordano Bruno [burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition, in 1600, for refusing to renounce his ideas] rather than bow to such injustice. I do have such a right. But do I have the right to kill my family, my wife, my little son whom I love so much? My parents? Do I have the right to decide upon their fate? Back then, to take such poses didn’t bring anything good and was senseless. Have I answered your question?

RL: You said you served Soviet power. What do you think happened to Soviet power? Did some bad people just distort the idea of socialism or could the socialist idea simply never work?

BY: Sociologists and political scientists must respond to this. It is all changing now. It seemed to us then that Soviet power was the most just form of power. “Soviet” was a synonym of “good,” “normal.” Remember the phrases: “this not the way Soviet people act,” “this is not Soviet-like,” etc.? The very term “Soviet” meant “fair,” “honest,” “noble.”

Of course, this term “Soviet” was tarnished a great deal by the evil deeds perpetrated by people, including Lenin, who ordered: “shoot these, shoot those.” Well, to that I respond - back then we were at war. We had two distinct warring sides—the Reds and the Whites. And Lenin himself, don’t forget, got 4 bullets, right? We were at war and all’s fair in war, as they say. And, when in peacetime, we had these terrible Stalinist repressions, when innocent people were liquidated, this cast a black shadow over Soviet power. But to complain, to protest was senseless. Everyone was held tight by an iron hand. The choice was: either obey or put your head on the execution block. Not everybody can do the latter ... RL