in Nazi-occupied Holland as a British agent while an adolescent. Fol-
lowing the war, he joined the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
and was posted to South Korea. Following the North Korean invasion
of South Korea, Blake was captured and spent the remainder of the
war in a prison camp in Manchuria. He claims that he volunteered to
the KGB during his captivity out of his revulsion with Allied bomb-
ing of civilians in North Korea. Whether Blake was truly an ideolog-
ical recruit is not known for sure, but by the time of his repatriation
to Great Britain in the summer of 1953, he was a recruited Soviet
source with the code name “Diomid” (Diamond). Blake’s handler in
London was Sergei Kondrashev, an experienced case officer who de-
vised clever tradecraft to run Blake in Western Europe. Blake pro-
vided the KGB with detailed information on SIS and CIA operations,
including the Berlin Tunnel.
Blake was betrayed by a Soviet bloc defector, Michael Gole-
niewski, and arrested in 1961. At his semisecret trial in London,
Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison—one year, the judge as-
serted, for every person he betrayed and sent to his death. Blake was
sprung from prison in 1966 by an IRA veteran acting without KGB
direction. Blake made his way to Moscow, where he lives today. He
is the author of an interesting autobiography.BLOKHIN, VASILY MIKHAILOVICH (1895–1955).Possibly the
most prolific executioner of the 20th century, Blokhin acted as chief
of the headquarters branch that ran Lubyankaprison from the 1930s
through 1953. As such, he personally shot leading party members and
two former chiefs of his service, Genrykh Yagodaand Nikolai
Yezhov, as well as members of Joseph Stalin’s family. According to
a recent biography of Stalin, Blokhin often carried out these duties—
which Stalin referred to as black work (chornaya rabota)—wearing
a butcher’s leather apron. In 1940 Blokhin oversaw the shooting of
14,000 Polish officers at Katyn, reportedly executing 7,000 men.
Blokhin, a veteran of the tsarist army, joined the Chekain 1921
and rose through the ranks. He was rewarded for his duties, decorated
with the Order of Lenin, and was promoted to major general in 1945.
Blokhin retired for reasons of health in 1953. Shortly prior to his sui-
cide in 1955, he was stripped of some of his medals for “discrediting
the service.”32 •BLOKHIN, VASILY MIKHAILOVICH (1895–1955)06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 32