Moskovskaya Pravda: Interview of George Blake, Former MI-6 Officer and KGB Double Agent

On July 31, 2020, the City of Moscow daily newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published a chapter from the upcoming book on the Soviet intelligence officers by journalist Ilona Yegiazarova. The chapter is based on an interview of George Blake, an MI-6 officer who was a double agent for the KGB. Born in Rotterdam in 1922, Blake was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1961, sentenced to 42 years in prison, but escaped to Moscow in 1966 where he lives to this day [Blake passed away on December 26, 2020]. Below is my English translation available only on this blog.

Ilona Yegiazarova: My Name is Blake, George Blake

Moskovskaya Pravda July 31, 2020

We continue to publish a series of materials dedicated to the centenary of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Today, our columnist Ilona Yegiazarova, in a new chapter of an upcoming book, talks about her meeting with a man who worked simultaneously for the British (MI-6) and Soviet intelligence (KGB), was captured in North Korea, sentenced to 42 years in prison in Great Britain and fled from there to Moscow…

Like A London Dandy

Colonel George Blake will turn 98 on November 11, 2020. He is almost the same age as the SVR. Our meeting took place a few years ago, and looking at this imposing gentleman, it was impossible to believe that he was so old and that everything he went through was true. His elegant three-piece suit, his massive silver watch chain hanging from a waistcoat pocket, his posture, his “foreign” accent, his wooden cane with a knob in the form of a setter’s head...

-You’re just a London dandy, I tell him, and he beams with pleasure.

George Blake, or, as we call him, Georgy Ivanovich, is a man with a unique life story even by the standards of the SVR, which has seen a lot in its century-long existence.

He was born as George Behar in Rotterdam in the family of a Dutch mother and a Sephardic Jew father from Constantinople. His father died when George was 12, the family was in financial difficulties, and it was decided to send the boy to Cairo, to the house of his rich aunt, who married a local merchant. Here George received great education - first at a French lyceum, then at an English college. He grew up very religious and dreamed of becoming a pastor in his native Rotterdam. The plans were thwarted by the Second World War.

-My youth, Blake recalled, is associated with the horrors of the occupation. On May 10, 1940, Rotterdam was subjected to barbaric bombardment by German aircraft. The city almost burned to the ground. Thirty-one thousand houses were destroyed.

His mother and sisters left for England, fleeing from certain death. And 17-year-old George, who came from Cairo to his homeland to finish his education, remained in Holland - to participate in the Resistance movement: he acted as a liaison and distributed anti-fascist leaflets.

In 1942, he moved to England to stay with his family and continued the fight against the Nazis from there. He changed the “dangerous” family name Behar to Blake and in 1943 volunteered for the British Navy. In the last year of the war, he was already employed by the Secret Intelligence Service.

Assessing the balance of power in the world at that time, British intelligence already realized that after the war the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe would gain a great deal of power and it tried to counteract this trend in every possible way.

- At that time, I still did not understand anything about politics, I did not know anything about Russia, but the feats of Soviet soldiers during the war impressed me, - says Blake. - I regretted that after the victory [in Europe], there was a break between the West and the East, that the Cold War began. In the West, everyone was convinced that the Soviets were about to attack. I thought so, too...

The Bible of a Marxist

British intelligence sent Blake to courses at Cambridge University to study Russian.

-I was considered a promising young man, Blake smiles. - Professor Hill taught Russian at the university - her mother was of Russian descent, she was fluent in the language and was Russian Orthodox. Mrs. Hill took the students whom she especially liked (and I was one of them) to the Russian Orthodox Church. She inspired love and interest in the culture and the sad fate of the Russian people, who constantly suffered from the external and internal enemies. In general, while at the university, I already had a colossal interest and respect for everything Russian...

After Cambridge, Blake, an MI-6 officer, successfully recruited agents in Eastern Europe. The MI-6 leadership was interested in the information about the Soviet Union, and George was sent to Hamburg to collect information about Soviet troops in Germany.

One of his first major assignments was to Korea. Working at the British Embassy under the cover of a vice-consul, George Blake, an MI-6 station chief in Seoul, was supposed to monitor the course of hostilities between North and South Korea, and also to collect information on the Soviet Far East, the Primorye region, Siberia, and Manchuria.

It was then that a turning point occurred in his world view.

-The war was fierce, the South Korean government was pro-fascist, Blake recalls. The closer I observed Syngman Rhee’s regime, the more disgusted I felt. This old dictator did not tolerate any opposition, people were arrested and persecuted using the Gestapo methods, and the Minister of Education openly admired the Nazis and even hung a portrait of Hitler in his office. The United States assisted the regime. American planes - flying fortresses - bombed small, defenseless Korean villages. We also came under fire. I began to wonder: can it be [morally] right to be on the side of the aggressors? As a representative of the Western world, I felt guilty about everything that happened. So, I made a decision not to work against the communists. And then my colleagues and I were taken prisoner by the North Koreans...

Blake was detained in a remote village for three years. That was a difficult time. For a long time afterwards, he was haunted by the physical effects of that captivity: because of the cold in the huts, he developed the so-called “sleeping sickness.” Upon his return to England, he often had to lock himself up in the office in the middle of the working day to get a half an hour of sleep that his exhausted body craved. The hunger he had lived through gave rise to his passion for gourmet restaurants. And because of the uncomfortable shoes that he had to wear in Korea, he developed the habit of taking off his shoes every chance he got, even at his work…

While in captivity, Karl Marx’s Capital in Russian came into his hands and he read it in order to occupy himself with something and to practice the language, but…

- This book turned my mind upside down, it affected me almost like... the Bible in an earlier time. I passionately wanted to bring closer that very bright future which Marx wrote about... Now I understand how naive I was, how much I acted under the influence of romantic impulses, but that is how I became a convinced communist...

Blake told the North Korean guards that he was ready to work for the Soviet Union. After leaving prison, he returned to London to his previous job as if nothing had happened and... became a double agent.

The value of the information that Blake passed on to the USSR can hardly be overestimated: in 10 years, he exposed the names of 400 MI-6 officers and agents whom they recruited in Eastern Europe and he photographed classified documents. But, most importantly, he warned about the existence of secret cable lines thanks to which the British were eavesdropping on the Soviet military units and airfields in the Soviet zone of occupation in Vienna.

In December 1953, at a secret meeting between the Secret Intelligence Service and the CIA, it was decided to lay a tunnel with wiretapping systems to the communication lines of Soviet troops in the GDR. Blake informed Soviet intelligence about the impending operation, and the Center began to use the tunnel to misinform the adversaries. Having used up this resource to the maximum, three years later, the Soviet foreign intelligence “accidentally” found the tunnel. There was a world-wide scandal and our country used the situation to advance its political agenda.

George Blake did not receive a dime from Soviet intelligence - that was the condition he made himself. He solely worked for the idea [the ideology].

On April 12, 1961, on the day of Yury Gagarin’s flight into space, the British newspapers published the news of Blake’s arrest. He was exposed by a Polish defector. Interrogations followed. The interrogators were quite polite since Blake’s ex-colleagues looked at him as if he were a madman: “You worked for the Soviets for free, you believed in communism?!”... He was sentenced to 42 years in prison. But the worst thing was that his family learned about his covert activities not from him, but from the newspapers.

His wife Gillian, who by that time already had two sons with him and was pregnant with the third, did not share her husband’s communist ideas. She worked as a secretary for the British intelligence, and her father, a colonel, was involved in the Soviet monitoring in the past. A few years after the verdict was announced, she told Blake that she found a new love interest and asked for a divorce...

Imprisoned in one of the toughest English prisons, Wormwood Scrubs, Blake was looking for the ways to get out.

-In prison, I practiced yoga, improved my Arabic and... all the time I thought hard how to make an escape. Six years passed like that. And then…

Several Irish dissident prisoners helped him get a radio communication set.

-Through the radio, I sent the message out, Blake says, noting the time when I could make an escape. Seizing the moment - during the broadcast of a football match, when the whole prison was glued to the TV screens, I sawed off the decaying window bar and went down the rope ladder thrown by my friends. The car was already waiting for me below...

Even today, more than half a century later, Blake remembers this story with anxiety and considers his luck to have been fantastic.

- Is it true that one common criminal knew about your impending escape and did not betray you? I asked Georgy Ivanovich.

Blake laughs contentedly:

- Not only that criminal, but also another prisoner was a banker in his previous life. I even gave him the Koran in Arabic as a goodbye gift. They both said: “You are working against the state and so are we! We are on the same side of the barricades ... An English couple active in the peace movement also helped me in my escape... Every year - on the day of my escape - I call them to express my gratitude.

This is just a simple listing of facts, of words ... But, for a moment, think about what charm and power of persuasion you need to possess so that people would help you risking their own lives... They took Blake from England to Berlin in a car with their two children. The fugitive was lying in the trunk ... It’s scary to imagine what would have happened to them had they been found out… Soon he was in the USSR - the country of his dreams.

To Understand and Forgive

- I am often asked whether I experienced shock or disappointment when I saw the realities of Soviet life. Did I regret what I had done? No! There were no ten different types of sausages in the USSR, but here I felt complete freedom, after all, I had just escaped from prison! And my personal life took a positive turn - I married a beautiful Russian woman Ida Kareyeva, my son Misha was born...

The SVR awarded Blake the status of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War - with all the attendant benefits. He was granted a four bedroom apartment and employed as a trade union official at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). According to him, that was a great job:

- We [often] went on business trips. I organized various official celebrations, I vividly remember that [a bottle of] Algerian port then cost only 7 rubles... We did hardly any work and we had a lot of fun...

And yet his past would sometimes catch up with him. He missed his three sons who were growing up in London.

-When I was in prison, I asked my wife Gillian not to bring them to visit me, Blake recalls. I made an attempt to get closer to them 20 years after the separation. I wrote to my middle son, and he came with my mother and sister to Berlin which I often visited. We talked for two weeks.  He left and shared everything with his brothers. Soon they also came to see me. We had a long and difficult conversation on the first evening. My sons did not share my beliefs, but they understood me! They are very religious people and believe that if a person is convinced that something is holy, that can justify his behavior. In England, ideological convictions are generally well-respected. Voltaire’s phrase: “I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” is taken seriously. In addition, two more circumstances helped my case: my mother [their grandmother] never let my children forget about me, and my first wife did not turn my children against me, for which I am grateful to her.

Now all his four sons - Russian and English – keep in touch, and his Russian grandson even visits his relatives in England to practice the language.

-He’s a modern kid and spends all his time on the Internet, Blake says with a smile.

All Blake’s sons have had successful careers. The oldest son is a scholar of Japan and works in a Japanese firm in London. The middle son is a former military man and now works as a firefighter.

-He will soon turn 60, he is strong and healthy, he already speaks Russian quite well, says Georgy Ivanovich with pride. He has a high social status, because he has a smart wife - she founded a company for helping people with disabilities, that’s a worthy cause.

-My third son, an Anglican priest, worked in a mission in Paraguay. It turns out that he made my youthful dream of pastoral service come true. And my Russian son is a professor at the Higher School of Economics. I have 9 grandchildren. Perhaps, that’s what happiness is all about…

However, in order to be perfectly happy, George Blake still finds something missing.

-Don’t laugh, he warns me. I miss the victory of communism. That which was constructed in the USSR and China is far from the [communist] ideals I believed in. It’s true that the USSR took on global responsibility for the great experiment, but it was not crowned with success. Stalin’s repressions, the persecution of the church, and many aspects of today’s Russia - I cannot approve of any of that. There is more order in the West now than here. However, I predict: the American empire will soon perish, because “all who take the sword shall perish by the sword.” And the decades will pass and the world will understand that there simply cannot be a better model of society than communism - and then all wars will stop...

And what about the religious beliefs of our hero, you ask? During the war, in captivity, and in foreign lands, Blake always found time to attend the services and pray, but his views have undergone great changes.

-I was a Calvinist and believed in predestination, says Blake. And today, having gone through so much, I think: if everything is predetermined, then what is the point of living? I acknowledge Christ as a great man, but not a son of God. I don’t believe in life after death. There is no eternal salvation. And there is no eternal punishment. Only silence all around...

- That sounds like a very sad toast. By the way, what are you drinking? I ask him.

- Oh! Blake perks up. I love dry red wine and make mulled wine from it with pleasure.

-Write down the recipe: the wine is diluted with hot water, sugar is added to taste, a little clove is stuck into the orange slices and immersed in the diluted liquid, and then put on low heat for half an hour - just watch it not to boil!

-I hate gin and whiskey, Blake continues.  My wife and I sometimes drink vodka. But often she gets annoyed: I can stay with one glass for two hours, and I also dilute vodka with balsam [herbal liqueur].

Finally, I cannot but ask this wise man whose actions affected History in many ways:

- Georgy Ivanovich, do you dream of some future time when intelligence work won’t be needed?

- Yes, but, unfortunately, this won’t happen anytime soon. We live in the world of deception, violence, and competition. This means that our Service [SVR] is very much needed.

George Blake often calls himself “a very lucky man” [English in the original]. But as Herodotus said, good luck follows the brave. Perhaps many of our readers won’t understand how it was possible to work against the country in which your children live. But ... did you ever have a burning idea or a fervent conviction? Have you ever believed in something you were ready to give your life for?

 

 

RIA Novosti: Interview of Alexander Bondarenko, Soviet Intelligence Historian - The Story of Anna Ziberova, Veteran SMERSH Officer

On March 8, 2019, the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an interview of a journalist and intelligence historian, colonel Alexander Bondarenko. Bondarenko is the author of two books on Soviet military intelligence, including Heroes of SMERSH (2019) and the biography of Pavel Fitin, the WWII Soviet intelligence chief. He is currently working on the biography of Yury Drozdov, a long-time chief of the KGB Illegal Intelligence Department S. Below is my English translation available only on this blog.

Intelligence Historian Alexander Bondarenko: The Girl and the SMERSH - How Female Beauty Helped Catch Spies During the War

RIA Novosti March 8, 2019

The fairer half of humanity and intelligence services, the combination of mystery and secrecy with feminine charms thanks to which women can often do more than men – that is a topic that will never be boring. Many stories about the women who worked in the intelligence field have already been told - to the extent possible, of course. But very little is known about the women from the “opposite” service – the counterintelligence. No doubt remarkable people worked there, too. One of them was the military counterintelligence officer Anna Kuzminichna Ziberova.

This year, in the Molodaya Gvardiya book series “Lives of Remarkable People,” the book entitled Heroes of SMERSH was published, dedicated to the outstanding officers of the military counterintelligence service during the Great Patriotic War. Among the 21 heroes described in the book, there is only one woman - Anna Ziberova. In an interview with RIA Novosti, the author of the book, intelligence historian Alexander Bondarenko says that “this book is a memorial to all military counterintelligence officers, including Anna Kuzminichna whom I remember as a very soft-spoken, delicate, and sincere person.”

Trust through Charm

“In counterintelligence, including military counterintelligence, women were mainly employed in the staff positions - in office work, personnel department, etc. A female operative is a rarity in counterintelligence, especially in military counterintelligence, because the army is considered men’s business” - notes Bondarenko.

A graduate of a pedagogical university who had just received her diploma, and not just a pretty girl, but a real beauty, Anna could have taught literature in some high school, instilled a love of poetry and prose in her students, but ...

“But the war began. And many people who never even considered working for state security and intelligence services, but instead wanted to teach children, [or] build houses, factories, and cities, had to put on a uniform,” says Bondarenko. Anna was recruited into the Office of the Special Departments of the NKVD within which military counterintelligence operated at that time. She was assigned to do “investigations” – which meant finding out the identities of people who, for whatever reason, attracted the attention of the state security institutions. So, instead of checking school essays, she was checking people.

“And here Anna Kuzminichna turned out to be very useful,” Bondarenko notes. “Counterintelligence is generally built on trust and doing ‘investigations’ even more so. And trust arises from sympathy for a person. If someone with a heavy jaw and a narrow forehead approached you, and, in addition, couldn’t clearly explain what he wanted, you would quickly try to get away. But if, instead, a beautiful, intelligent woman approached you with a book in her hands and asked for something, any normal person would help her right away,” Bondarenko adds.

The Deadly Risk

The military counterintelligence service regime was harsh with no days off and no holidays. The discipline was very strict. The officers worked hard from morning till evening and did not spare themselves. In the morning they received their assignments and dispersed throughout Moscow. They returned late in the evening and reported what they had accomplished during the day.

In addition, doing “investigations” was fraught with mortal danger, although it does not seem like that. You walk around, meet the people of interest, talk to them while drinking tea (if you can obtain it despite war shortages), and write the reports later.

[And yet] here are two episodes. In the summer of 1943 (at that time, the Special Departments were already replaced by the SMERSH – The Main Counterintelligence Directorate of the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Defense. SMERSH meant “Death to spies!”). Military counterintelligence officers had to neutralize a German agent who came on a business trip from the front and lived in his sister’s empty apartment in the center of Moscow on Rozhdestvenka Street, very close to the Lubyanka. Anna Kuzminichna had the apartment under surveillance. Suddenly, at some point, this officer transmitted a message by radio that on a certain day and a certain hour, he would leave the house to cross the front line and go over to the Germans. It was decided to arrest the spy on the street when he left the house.

Anna was supposed to be at the entrance and, seeing that the agent left the apartment, wave a white handkerchief through the window on the floor above. Preparing for this, counterintelligence officers had already taken the glass out of the window frame. Everything seemed pretty simple. Far away from the front, the center of Moscow, and somewhere on the street, one’s own colleagues from the arrest unit – what could go wrong?

She arrived at the place ahead of time, entered through the main entrance and suddenly saw that the agent was already going down the stairs: he left the apartment earlier than was supposed. Seeing the girl, the spy stopped and let her in. “With peripheral vision, I notice that he is looking after me. I go up the first floor, then the second, the third, but he is still standing there!” - Ziberova recalled in her memoir.

What to do now? When she reached the top floor, she knocked on the door of an apartment. Luckily, somebody lived there. An old woman opened the door. Anna asked her for a glass of water, and when the old  woman went back into the apartment, she took off her shoes, silently ran to the window, broke the glass (after all, the “prepared” window was on a floor below), cut her hand in the process, and waved with a blood-stained handkerchief …

When Anna saw that counterintelligence officers noticed her signal and were approaching the main entrance from all directions, she sat down on the stairs and began to cry – the stress was so great. In the meantime, the agent exited the building and was immediately captured.

But was this so serious? Well, she cut her hand. It hurt, of course, but did this cause her stress? “Such a reaction is understandable. The risk was actually great - after all, if the German agent had figured out who the girl was, he could have hit her on the head – he had nothing to lose - and then thrown her down the stairwell. Counterintelligence officers waiting in ambush wouldn’t know about it and the spy could calmly go out into the street and sneak away,” says Bondarenko.

A more serious case occurred during the same year [1943]. In the area of the ​​Taganskaya Square, a sleazy-looking colonel, a German agent who had also come from the front, had an apartment and, like the spy from the Rozhdestvenka Street, lived by himself. Likewise, counterintelligence officers knew that the colonel was about to return back to his paymasters across the front line.

The counterintelligence unit went to his apartment. Anna went first to find out if this person was at home. “I knock on the door, no one opens it. I turned my back to the door and began to kick it with my feet so that they could hear me. Suddenly the door opens, and I literally fall into the corridor. I feel that someone grabbed me by my collar and threw me into a small room, having locked the door on the latch from the inside. I realized that I was in the toilet,” she recalled.

“I hear someone running around the apartment. There is a strong knock on the door, someone runs to the back door, but our guys are already there waiting. They entered the apartment, one grabbed the colonel, the other ran to the front door, where they were still knocking” - wrote Ziberova. Anna’s commanding officer, who ran into the apartment, immediately asked the detainee: “Where is our girl?” “Had I known she was yours, I would have killed her!” the colonel shot back. “Therefore, on the ‘secret front’ there were just as many dangers as on the real front,” Bondarenko notes.

Anna worked successfully, delicately, trying not to arouse any suspicions of those whom she talked to, whom she interviewed. She knew Moscow extremely well and was familiar with all the courtyards and the back entrances. And, after a certain time, she began to receive the most difficult assignments.

Once she was even mistaken for a spy herself. When the Soviet atomic project began during the war, the organization with the provisional name the Laboratory No. 2 of the Soviet Academy of Sciences became its “center” - this is now the world-famous Kurchatov Institute. Its location was in a district on the then outskirts of Moscow on the territory of the Shchukinsky military town. And many of the residents of the town began to get jobs in the Laboratory No. 2. Anna was instructed to make “investigations” of those wishing to work at this facility. In order to do this, she took on a cover job as a maid on the territory of the military town.

And it so happened that one of the women, with whom she talked, suspected Ziberova of espionage and reported her suspicions to the criminal investigation department. The policemen detained Anna and brought her to the police station, where she refused to reveal her identity. At some point, Anna’s boss, Colonel Zbrailov, found out what was going on and personally came to rescue the “spy.” The police chief praised Anna to Zbrailov, saying that she stood firm no matter what they tried. “I wish I had staff like that” – he exclaimed wistfully.

The life of Anna Ziberova was no different from the lives of millions of Soviet people who lost their family members and close friends in the war. In 1944, Anna’s beloved husband, a military pilot, got killed. After that, she became so ill that she began to hallucinate. “I see a pilot on the street, I run after him, I grab his hand, he looks around, I see that this is a stranger, I turn away and run [in tears],” she recalled. In addition, Anna’s brother and two brothers of her husband also got killed in the war, and her father died. “So, the war affected Anna Kuzminichna in a horrible way,” says Bondarenko.

The Fearless SMERSH

Ziberova worked in the military counterintelligence service for about forty years. In 1996, for the first time after the war, Anna Kuzminichna visited her high school No. 464 on the 60th anniversary of its opening. There was a special program in the assembly hall. Ziberova was the only one left from her entire class. The portraits of her classmates who got killed in the war looked at her from the walls.

As the oldest graduate, Anna Kuzminichna was given the floor and asked to tell about her studies and the course of her later life. After talking about the school and her time as a student, she said – “And then I worked in the SMERSH...” After these words, as she recalled later, deadly silence enveloped the hall. Those who were looking at her with attention and interest [suddenly] dropped their eyes, as if she had said something shameful. Anna Kuzminichna said that at first she thought something was wrong with her clothes. And then, from the depths of the hall, somebody who, apparently, thought that he knew what he was talking about yelled out: “SMERSH is terrible [in a moral sense]!”

“This is not surprising. After all, at that time the history of our state security and intelligence services was portrayed in the darkest colors. One scary myth was followed by another, even scarier. SMERSH was generally presented exclusively as a punitive organization,” says Bondarenko. According to him, this happened because the history of military counterintelligence was kept classified. “Do you know where all this nonsense about SMERSH came from? From the Western spy fiction. Few people remember that the SMERSH was described for the first time by the British writer Ian Fleming in one of his James Bond novels, From Russia with Love. In the novel, Fleming presented it as a bunch of blockheads engaged in the liquidation of people. And his head of SMERSH was a general with a "bright" Russian family Grubozaboyshchikov [lit. brutal killer]” Bondarenko says.

Let’s go back to that school hall where the SMERSH was given such a “high rating.” In all likelihood, Ziberova should have been offended. But she laughed merrily in response. “Am I really that terrible?” - asked the short, still beautiful and very charming woman. Everyone in the hall was embarrassed.

And she began to tell in detail what her work consisted of and why it was so necessary for our country. The audience held their breath. And when the story ended, everyone stood up and applauded for a long time. There were flowers next to the stage to be given to all the visiting graduates. The director of the school, in a fit of emotion, grabbed all of them, and gave Anna Kuzminichna that huge bouquet.