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They shamed the British intelligence service for a long time. Now, the last great spy of the Cold War has taken down the poster. George Blake, 98, died in Russia on Saturday.
The great spy George Blake in Russia in 2006, from where he fled 40 years earlier. Now he’s dead. Stock Photography.
The death sentence came through the Russian state news agency Ria, referring to the SVR intelligence service, which handles Russian espionage abroad:
“We have great news: the legendary George Blake has passed away”
Legendary is not an exaggeration.
Although the infamous had gone just as well.
Of course, a classic double spy receives double tags as a consequence.
Blake was born in 1922 as George Behar in Rotterdam. Dutch mother, naturalized British and Egyptian Jewish father.
During World War II, Blake was active in the Dutch resistance movement. In 1943 he fled to Great Britain. With his background, the young man was attractive to the MI6 intelligence service. The following year, he was hired as a spy.
In the late 1940s, Blake was sent to Seoul to gather information on communism in North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union.
At the beginning of the Korean War In 1950, Blake was captured by the North Korean side. During his years of captivity he became a communist. Not because of brainwashing, he has repeated in interviews, but after witnessing what the American bombings of North Korean villages did.
Once released, MI6 sent him to Berlin in 1955 to recruit Soviet officers as double spies, an ideal position for someone who was just that.
Like Bill Haydon in John le Carré’s novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (in Swedish “Mullvaden”), Blake could provide the Russians with British secrets, but he led MI6 to believe that the flow of information was going elsewhere. .
Blake caused enormous damage by exposing spies and covert operations. In an interview with the BBC in 1990, he estimated that he betrayed more than 500 agents working for the West, but denied that 42 of them lost their lives due to their duties.
The game ended in 1961. A Polish intelligence officer knew of a Soviet “mole” between the British and Blake was discovered.
At the trial, he recognized some cases of transfer of information to the Soviet Union. The punishment was extremely severe: 42 years in prison.
After five years in London’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Blake managed to escape via a rope ladder. To help, he had a petty Irish criminal and two anti-nuclear activists.
He went into hiding for a couple of months with benefactors in London. Blake himself considered his punishment so inhumane that he made people defend him.
Hiding in a motorhome, Blake arrived in East Berlin in 1966. He left behind his wife and three children. Never comeback.
Blake is considered the most dangerous type of spy. One who acts out of conviction and not for money or other rewards.
It was found well established in the Soviet Union. He remarried, had a son. He enjoyed retirement with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB security service, later FSB. He didn’t spit in the glass of vodka and enjoyed working at the Imemo research institute, where they didn’t work as much “but they had a lot of fun.”
Over the years, Blake was interviewed several times. He did not reveal words of remorse.
– When I look back on my life, everything seems logical and natural, he said in connection with the 90th anniversary and described himself as “happy and happy,” writes Reuters.
Unlike the better-known stuntmen like compatriots Kim Philby and Donald Maclean, with whom he associated in Russia, Blake experienced the fall of the Soviet Union and communism’s journey to the dustbin of history.
But the belief in socialism was ingrained in the man named Georgi Ivanovich in his new homeland.
– Perhaps this is the end of my life, but it is not the end of the path that humanity must travel to achieve the ideals of a socialist society, he said on Russian television in 2017.
A russian before On Saturday, this colleague hailed Blake as “a brilliant professional” with “remarkable courage” who contributed to world peace.
“The memory of this legendary person will be forever preserved in our hearts,” he said in the grieving statement.
In 2007, Blake was honored with a medal by the same colleague, the former KGB spy and now President Vladimir Putin.
Famous British spies of the Cold War
The British intelligence services were largely infiltrated by intelligence and intelligence agencies from the East during the Cold War.
The famous Cambridge Five quintet (the spy ring was founded at the university in the 1930s) was recruited by the Soviet Union: Kim Philby (1912-1988), Guy Burgess (1911-1963), Donald Maclean (1913-1983) ), Anthony Blunt (1907-1983)) and John Cairncross (1913-1995).
The same page turn was also made by the perhaps less well-known but equally dangerous George Blake (1922-2020).
His espionage and escape to the east has been portrayed in countless articles, books, and movies over the years.
