Stalin’s Favorite Cartoonist

Remarkable obituary in the Times: Boris Yefimov, a Russian political cartoonist and propagandist, has died at age 109. Yefimov began working for Stalin even though Koba had executed Yefimov’s brother for “political reasons.” (“When you are a political cartoonist, you have to keep pace with politics,” Yefimov once noted.) As Soviet house cartoonist, Yefimov was a reliable ridiculer of Hitler; in 1947, he depicted a land-grabbing Eisenhower arriving at the North Pole. Even more remarkable: “When Mr. Yefimov was just 107, several Israeli newspapers reported that he was very likely the oldest living Jew, though he began to practice his religion only when he was 100.”