“Books have been written about him, films have been made. In terms of information, he has been highly respected and appreciated,” a spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR said on December 26, according to the agency.
“In intelligence, he was highly respected and appreciated. He himself joked:” I am a foreign car that has adapted to Russian roads, “the statement added.
Blake was a double agent who used his position as an officer in the British Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, to spy on the Soviet Union.
He was the last in a line of British spies whose secret work for the Soviet Union humiliated the country’s intelligence institution when it was discovered at the height of the Cold War.
Blake was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1922, moved to England in 1942 and was transferred to the Dutch section of the SIS in August 1944.
“Blake returned from captivity to work for both the Soviet and British secret services, betraying many agents who were later executed, including a network in East Germany,” reads an entry from his life on British government website.
The British authorities arrested Blake in April 1961 and admitted that he was a double agent for the Soviet Union.
The spy was sentenced to 42 years in prison, but escaped in 1966 with the help of other detainees and two peace activists, after climbing the prison wall with a ladder made of knitting needles.
Blake was taken out of the UK in a van and passed through undiscovered Western Europe, crossing the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.
He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, where he was brought as a hero.
Reflecting on his life in a 1991 Reuters interview in Moscow, Blake said he believed the world was on the eve of communism.
“It was an ideal that, if it could be achieved, it would have really been worth it,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded the double agent the Friendship Order of the country in 2007. Putin issued a statement of condolences after Blake’s death, which was published on the Kremlin’s website.
“Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional with great vitality and courage,” Putin said.
“Over the years of hard work and hard work, he has made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and maintaining peace on the planet,” the statement added.
The British authorities believe that the spy betrayed around 42 British agents, although Blake claimed that the real number was around 600.