The Sharp Weapon of Soviet Laughter: Boris Efimov and Visual Humor

This article focuses on the life and work of Boris Efimov, the legendary Soviet caricaturist. Efimovʼs political caricatures spanned the life of the Soviet Union. He began working for the Bolsheviks during the Civil War in Ukraine, moved to Moscow in 1922, and worked for major Soviet publications until 1991. His work, as the article posits, helped to define Soviet visual culture and with it a form of visual Occidentalism. At the same time, Efimovʼs cartoons illustrate the connections between Soviet visual culture and Soviet power. Again and again, his caricatures were held up to be examples of how Soviet citizens needed to forge a new sense of self through the “healthy laughter” they provoked at the expense of state enemies. The Soviet caricature, the article concludes, therefore served as a powerful weapon in the stateʼs arsenal. No one wielded it more consistently than Boris Efimov.