Drawing Out Life in Russia

"True, I lived only 95 days in the 19th century," Boris Yefimov says with sly modesty. "And then together with the rest of the planet I entered the 20th century. We could not have suspected that it would be so awful, so troubled, so unprecedented in human history."

Yefimov is no ordinary centenarian--and not just because he is an eminent political cartoonist. This elfin man with outsize glasses also attended the birth of the Soviet Union and survived to witness its death throes. He remembers the last czar, Nicholas II, and met Lenin, the man who succeeded him in power. He was friends with Trotsky and took orders from Stalin. He stood face to face with Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials. He watched from the window of his Moscow apartment as Boris N. Yeltsin fired on the Russian parliament with tanks. And last spring, he cast his vote for Russia's latest leader, Vladimir V. Putin.

Indeed, it would be hard to find many people alive with more right to call the last 100 years "my century."

"What is it about my humble person that interests you?" Yefimov croons, his diction slightly old-fashioned, his eyebrows working overtime. "Is it that I've turned 100? If so, you must understand that it's no credit to me--I did nothing to achieve it. . . . I just lived and then lived some more. What's so special about that?"

Everything, in fact. In Russia's 20th century--in which tens of millions perished in successive wars, famines, death camps and political purges--just living, and then living some more, was no small feat.

Moreover, for a Jew, a Trotskyist and an "enemy of the people" who practiced the dangerous art of political cartooning, it was a sheer miracle.

It seemed like the movies. The phone rang, and Yefimov picked it up: "Comrade Yefimov? Please hold for Comrade Stalin."

At the name "Stalin," Yefimov leaps to his feet, just as he did more than half a century ago, no stiffness apparent in his 100-year-old knees. He sways slightly, holding an old-fashioned receiver to his ear, one hand steadying himself on his writing table. His expression is grim, as if he still hears the dictator's voice on the other end of the line.

"I heard a throat clear. . . . He didn't waste time on hellos. I remember it word for word: 'Yesterday Comrade Zhdanov spoke to you about a satirical cartoon. Do you understand what I'm talking about?'