Boris Yefimov

MOSCOW - Celebrated political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who drew brutally satirical images of the Soviet Union's foes in the service of Josef Stalin, died Wednesday. He was 108. Yefimov's death was given wide coverage on Russian state television. No cause was given. His cartoons spanned virtually the entire history of the communist state, from shortly after the 1917 revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Among his most memorable drawings was one showing a wretched-looking Hitler, who is said to have ordered Yefimov shot if the Nazis captured Moscow in World War II. Instead, Yefimov was sent after the war to the Nuremburg trials to draw the Nazis as they faced justice. Yefimov also turned his pen against the United States. His Cold War drawings portrayed Uncle Sam and American leaders as warmongers and money-grubbing capitalists. In his later years he told the story of Stalin personally ordering him in 1947 to draw U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower arriving with a large army to claim the North Pole. Stalin made his own corrections to the cartoon, in red crayon. Yefimov acknowledged ambivalence about his role as Stalin's helper, but he expressed great pride in his historic role. "To a certain extent, cartoons were weapons," he said in a 2002 interview with The Associated Press. Many of his cartoons ran in the newspaper Izvestia, whose current editor paid tribute to Yefimov in a televised interview Wednesday. "Much of what he did will never sink into oblivion," said editor Vladimir Mamontov. "On the contrary, his works will remain not only as witnesses of the epoch, but ... as a clear understanding of human nature, people's characters, politics and life in general." Yefimov's birthday was Sunday.