George Blake, a British spy who spied for the Soviet Union and exposed hundreds of Western intelligence agents to the KGB, died in Russia today (Saturday), Russia’s RIA news agency reported.
A statement from the Associated Press said the notorious spy had died at the age of 98 and that the man had “linked his fate to that of Russia after seeing its heroic efforts during World War II”.
Blake’s betrayal led to the execution of several Western intelligence agents throughout Eastern Europe and the exposure of many others and is considered one of the Soviet Union’s greatest intelligence achievements during the Cold War.
Blake, the son of an Egyptian Jewish father and a Dutch mother, fled the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to Britain in 1943. He enlisted in the British intelligence service MI6 in 1944. Blake participated in the Korean War but was captured by North Korean soldiers in 1951. During his captivity Blake became a sworn communist. Released as part of a prisoner exchange, he returned to work for the British intelligence organization.
Blake began transmitting information to Soviet intelligence agents and managed, with sophistication and systematicity, to expose to the KGB large parts of the spy system of Western European countries. But carelessness led to Blake’s exposure in 1961 and his arrest. He was sentenced to 42 years in prison at Wormwood Prison in London. Blake managed to escape from prison in 1966 with the help of two pro-communist activists and another prisoner. He was smuggled to West Germany, from where he managed to cross the border into East Germany.
Blake was accepted in Moscow as a hero and remained a sworn communist even after the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In 1991, in an interview with Reuters, he said: “Communism is an ideal that, if realized, would be worth all the effort and suffering. I thought this idea could be realized and worked for it. Unfortunately it did not work, but I believe it is a noble idea and humanity will return.”