Siberia in 1932 to develop a huge complex of camps to mine gold in
sub-Arctic northeastern Siberia. Despite an excellent record of pro-
duction, Berzin was arrested in 1937 and shot as a spy, apparently be-
cause of his relationship with British intelligence in 1918. Berzin was
replaced by his deputy Karp Pavlov, who had a far more notorious
reputation than Berzin.BERZIN, YAN KARLOVICH (1895?–1938).Born Peter Kyuzis in
Russian Latvia, Berzin had a career as an underground Bolshevik
revolutionary before the Revolution of November 1917. In 1924 he
was appointed chief of military intelligence, and for the next 10 years
he commanded a small corps of illegalagents who made important
recruitments throughout Western Europe. In 1936–1937, Berzin
served in Spain under the name “General Grishin,” dispatching
agents and saboteurs behind Franco’s lines. In June 1937, he was re-
called and reinstalled as chief of military intelligence. Like many vet-
erans of the Spanish Civil War, however, he was arrested on Joseph
Stalin’s orders. He was tried and shot in July 1938.
Berzin is credited by many historians as a competent spy master
and one of the fathers of Soviet special forces or Spetznazoperations.
Like many Latvian, Polish, and German revolutionaries, he fell vic-
tim to Stalin’s paranoia. Their deaths deprived the Soviet Union of
their best intelligence officers. Berzin was posthumously rehabili-
tated during the 1950s.BLACK CHAMBER. A Black Chamber is a facility, often located in
post offices, for mail and message interception, decoding, and de-
cryption. Black Chambers began in Russia and reached their apogee
in East Germany, where the Stasiread virtually all international and
domestic correspondence. For the Okhranaand Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the Black Chamber provided diplomatic cables and thou-
sands of pieces of raw intelligence from suspected dissidentsand
radicals. The Okhranamodel was improved by the Chekaand its
successor services.BLAKE, GEORGE (1927– ).The most important KGBpenetration of
British intelligence in the post-Stalin era was through George Blake,
the son of a Dutch mother and a Sephardic Jewish father. He servedBLAKE, GEORGE (1927– )•3106-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 31