A lecture by Stephen M. Norris on the Russian Victory Day in 2010
Steve Norris, professor of History, research interests include Russian history, Nationalism, visual history, as well as film and history. He is author of Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, Patriotism (Indiana University Press, 2012) and A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812-1945 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). His current project includes his work with images, nationhood, and propaganda in Russia during the 19th and 20th centuries. The project is entitled Communism's Cartoonist: Boris Efimov and the Soviet Century. Boris Efimov (1900-2008) was the most significant political caricaturist in Soviet history. He addresses Eflmov's career beginnings in Civil War Ukraine when he was just a teenager before he moved to Moscow in 1922 and worked as a cartoonist for major Soviet publications such as Izvestiia and Krokodil. Norris then addresses Eflmov's continuation in drawing caricatures for them until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This Efimov involves an exhibition of his works, an album containing examples of his cartoons, and a biography of his life and work.
Discussion and reception to follow.