George Blake 1922 - 2020

The Russian Federation announced yesterday that George Blake had died. He was 98 and living outside Moscow.

To the West he was a traitor. In Russia he was feted as a hero.

It would be difficult to read this Guardian obituary and not be moved.

Below are some extracts from the obit and a link to the full obituary.

Blake described communism as “a very noble experiment

“As I see it...Communist society is indeed the highest form of society imaginable in this world, but to build the highest form of society, the people who build it must possess the highest moral qualities,” he said.

After his escape, Blake was awarded the Order of Lenin. In 2007, on his 85th birthday, he was awarded the Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin. The former KGB officer said that Blake “and his colleagues made an enormous contribution to the preservation of peace, to security, and to strategic parity”.

“I do not believe in life after death,” Blake said in an interview with Rossiskaya Gazeta, Russia’s official government newspaper, on his 90th birthday. “In my childhood, I wanted to become a priest, but that passed. As soon as our brain stops receiving blood, we go, and after that there will be nothing. No punishment for the bad things you did, nor rewards for the utterly wonderful.” 

“These are the happiest years of my life, and the most peaceful,” Blake said in the 2012 interview marking his 90th birthday.

Blake is survived by his second wife, Ida, whom he married in Russia, their son, Misha, and three sons, James, Anthony and Patrick, from his first marriage.

• George Blake (Behar), intelligence agent, born 11 November 1922; died 26 December 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/george-blake-obituary