I just found out that the Russian cartoonist Boris Efimov died this week, only a few days after his 108th birthday.

http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/7162/

We spoke about him last week on this message board.

RIP Boris Efimov

Efimov was Stalin's favourite cartoonist. That's something relevant to consider, I think. However, Wikipedia is offering the following interesting fact:

"The year 1924 saw the publication of Efimov's first book, Politicheskiye Karikatury, which included a foreword by Leon Trotsky, a risky move considering Stalin's antipathy. It therefore met with initial disapproval from the publisher, Yuri Steklov, who would later pay with his life for not having Trotsky's words removed. As the 1920s waned, Efimov managed to avoid Stalin's wrath by portraying Trotsky as a traitor and fascist, despite their friendship."

That must have been a very strange kind of friendship!

I don't know much about Trotsky. They did not like to remember him.
I was not sure what he did or what happened to him.

Stalin and his regime represented the interests of this bureaucracy. But in order to consolidate their control over society this bureaucracy had to eliminate the genuine traditions of Bolshevism. Thus the struggle between Stalin's faction and the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, was a struggle between the genuine representatives of the working class and the up-and-coming bureaucratic elite.

Trotsky led an implacable struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union. The Stalinist regime's response was to expel him from the Soviet Communist Party and then exile him from the Soviet Union itself. Huge numbers of his supporters inside the Soviet Union ended up in Stalin's camps from which they were never to return. From exile Trotsky gathered supporters inside the Communist Parties with which he built the International Left Opposition.

Trotsky alone defended the genuine traditions, ideas and methods of Marxism. This in itself was a great achievement. But he went further: he was able to analyse and explain the phenomenon of Stalinism and offer an alternative to this terribly deformed caricature of what a genuinely healthy workers' state should be.

Today the fall of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe has led to confusion and demoralisation among many left activists, especially those from the Communist Parties. A reading of Trotsky, especially his classic, The Revolution Betrayed, can offer all these honest worker and youth activists an explanation of what has happened and also a way out. On this site we provide on-line versions of many of Trotsky's works (courtesy of the Marxist Internet Archive who have allowed us to mirror their site) together with more recent articles and documents on the various aspects of Trotsky's ideas.
The quote is from this site: http://www.trotsky.net/

Somehow I don't think Trotsky would be better for the Sovie Union, but I don't really know.

I love coloratura soprano. May be she was beautiful and he fall in love. I don't see anything wrong if one falls in love with coloratura.

I love Russian Nightingale song. And Netrebko's voice is good (may be she is not as much coloratura). May be his coloratura was like Netrebko.

HAVE NOT I EVEN IMAGINED TO LIVE SO LONG"
(The 102d birthday of cartoonist Boris Efimov)

          E.Andrusenko
          In October Russian cartoonist Boris Efimov marked his 102d birthday. He survived the whole 20th century with its "anxiety and joys, catastrophes and victories", geniuses and villains. Many famous personalities were heroes of his caricatures and cartoons as much as daily published in the Soviet and Russian central newspapers. He was a political satirist who worked under the government's instructions. Despite a widespread opinion that a caricature as well as a newspaper lives a single day, pictures by Efimov have survived years. One can hardly say what is the main thing about them - artistic skillfulness or the century's historic chronicle. Nevertheless, the 20th century is over but his pictures keep on living as well as their author. His memoirs, stories, essays, dozens of satirist albums, research in history and theory of art of caricature have been published. Recently Boris Efimov was appointed to head the new department of the caricature art of the Russian Academy of Art. Efimov says the appointment deserves a mention in the Guinness World Records Book. The patriarch of the national satire has met with reporters on the eve of his 102d birthday.
          He says the Academy of Arts has put forward an idea of raising ratings of the caricature art to return its public significance it used to have. The task is far form simple and perhaps unlikely to be implemented. Boris Efimov believes the caricature is loosing its original essence and could be hardly called the socially eloquent and useful art, as Maxim Gorky defined it.
          Answering the question whether this signals that caricature is dying, Efimov says it feels sick at least. He hopes the political cartoons would not revive their original fierce appearance if Russia acquired political enemies. Efimov believes it would be better to have no caricatures than to have enemies.
          The answer has puzzled the newsmen, one of whom wondered whether there are no similar people or events that could become objects of the political satire in the world currently fevered by crises and conflicts. In a response Boris Efimov said now the environment is different and the caricatures would unlikely insult or frighten anyone. Now we stand for stability and political correctness, he remarked, and it is senseless to use political aggression in caricatures for which Hitler put Efimov in a Gestapo list with the seal "find and hang".
          One can even imagine what a "killing power" Efimov's pencil had, especially during the Second World War when all the country knew Nazis ideologies by his cartoons rather than photos. Efimov's pictures were distributed behind the front line urging enemies to surrender. They have tangible influence on the history. Not surprisingly, the authorities regarded Efimov's skill as a powerful political weapon. In 1945 he among other Soviet correspondents participated as a painter in the well-known Nurnberg trial over Nazis where he saw for himself "heroes" of his satirical pictures whom he had painted by photographs.
          The other side of Boris Efimov's creativity is closer to culture and esthetic feeling than to politics. For instance, in 1943 British cartoonist Low wrote after the publication of Efimov's album "Hitler and His Gang": "Fantasies and the artistic method of Boris Efimov's caricatures are transparent for the British perception and mentality. Apparently, the Russian sense of humor is similar to the British one. Perhaps, thanks to the album this discovery will have even more intense impact on mutual understanding between the British and Russian people, better that a range of diplomatic statements". The acute political satire is likely to make way for a dialogue between painters from various countries who have peculiar ability of observation and a rare gift of painting funny pictures. The level of satiric graphics has lowered but "the old vine has not turned sour", Boris Efimov jokes.
          The Russian genuine cartoonist says his life is coming to the end and he wakes up every morning thanking God for another day he was given to do something more. He is full of plans and is looking forward to reading a lot, knowing whether he will have enough time for that or not. He wants to paint, print and see more things. Preparations are wrapping up for a set of 100 essays about people with whom Boris Efimov was acquainted during the 20th century. He says he hopes to have more time for doing everything he intends.
          In one of his poems Boris Efimov wrote: "Have not even I imagine to live so long". But he goes on living and working. When he is asked about the cause of his longevity, he responds with the same phrase: "I don't know, I have no idea…".
           

One of the Soviet agents involved in the assasination of Leon Trotsky was Pavel Sudoplatov. In my mind, Sudoplatov is always connected to the assasination of Yevhen Konovalets, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, who was killed by Sudoplatov in Rotterdam in 1938. He was offered a box of chocolates by a "true friend" who turned out to be the Sudoplatov. There was a bom hidden in the box and it exploded when Konovalets carried it along the Coolsingel (well-known street in Rotterdam). Konovalets died and was buried on the Crooswijk Cemetry in Rotterdam.



Konovalets's grave in Rotterdam

Yes, it does!

Why didn't I see that before?