In this 1941 cartoon, Boris Yefimov celebrated Nazi Germany's defeat at the Battle for Moscow, showing German troops carrying a coffin inscribed with the words "Myth of the Invincibility of the German Army." The ribbon on the wreath says, "Taken in untimely destruction on the Soviet-German front." (ITAR-TASS/Associated Press) Russia's Boris Yefimov, a celebrated political cartoonist who satirized the communist state from the Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union, has died. He was 108.

Yefimov's death Wednesday in Moscow was confirmed by Russian state television but no cause of death was given.

Yefimov was a regular contributor to Pravda, Izvestia and Krokodil.

He began as a cartoonist in Kiev in 1919 and did cartoons about the Soviet Union, and its enemies, until the fall of the communist state in 1991. He continued to work up until his death and last year was given the title chief artist of Izvestia.

As a boy he once saw the last tsar, Nicholas II, and later he met Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin and worked under dictator Josef Stalin.

His life encompassed both world wars, the revolution, the Cold War and several changes of guard in the Soviet system.

His cartoons famously satirized Uncle Sam and the U.S. political system, showing American leaders as warmongers and money-grubbing capitalists.

Boris Yefimov, shown in September 2002, was the Soviet Union's most celebrated political cartoonist. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press)Stalin personally ordered Yefimov in 1947 to draw U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower arriving with a large army to claim the North Pole, making his own corrections to the cartoon in red crayon.

Feared Stalin

The cartoonist said he lived in daily fear of a telephone call from Stalin.

"It was sometimes the case that I had to do something that went against my convictions," he said in a 1998 interview. "But I thought that those at the top knew better about politics. Later I knew that whatever my objections might have been, they would have brushed me away like some kind of pawn."

He also was a propaganda artist against Germany during the Second World War.

One of his famous drawings shows a wretched-looking Hitler, who is said to have ordered Yefimov shot if the Nazis captured Moscow.

He also portrayed a defeated German army marching away from Moscow in 1941, carrying a coffin inscribed with the words "Myth of the Invincibility of the German Army."

He witnessed both the concentration camps of Poland, after liberation, and the Nuremberg trials.

Born in Kiev

Boris Yefimov was born Boris Fridland in Kiev on Sept. 28, 1900, the second son of a Jewish shoemaker. He grew up in Poland, and studied drawing but was forced to quit because of the chaos caused by the civil war.

He and his brother both abandoned their Jewish-sounding surname after the First World War and in 1922, he left for Russia.

His brother, who became a correspondent for Izvestia and covered the Spanish Civil War, was eventually executed by the state.

A book featuring his work, Boris Yefimov in Izvestia, was published in 1969.

After the fall of the Soviet system, Yefimov often decried the lack of clear targets for political cartooning.

"Much of what he did will never sink into oblivion," said current Izvestia 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."

With files from the Associated Press