Russia honors its Cold War spies

New perspective
Unmasked in 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison, but five years later, aided by sympathizers, he escaped and fled to the Soviet Union. He was made a KGB colonel, wrote two memoirs and still trains Russian spies.

Blake told Russia Today he chose to switch allegiance during the Korean War, when, as a British vice consul in Seoul, he was captured by invading North Korean forces.

Seeing American bombs falling “on small, completely defenseless Korean villages, one didn’t feel too proud of being on the Western side,” he said. “And I came to the conclusion that it was wrong to fight communism.”

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, President Boris Yeltsin tried to erase the memory of the Soviet past. On Monday the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta said that “hotheads” in the government considered expelling Blake and “he lived through several unpleasant months” until authorities dropped the idea.

Blake is still loyal to his socialist ideals, Ivanov said. “He’s not a die-hard Communist, but he still shares ideas of social justice.”

His whereabouts as the praise was lavished on him were not disclosed, but Ivanov said he still swims, does yoga and travels in Russia. “He reads a lot, he likes classical music and he also loves walking.”

Koval helped develop atomic bomb
While Blake’s exploits are widely publicized, few outside the espionage world knew of Iowa-born Koval until Putin posthumously gave him the Hero of Russia medal on Nov. 2 for helping the Soviets develop the atomic bomb.

Koval was born to Jewish parents who emigrated from Czarist Russia. In the early 1930s, the family returned to the Soviet Union, lured by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s promise of a Jewish homeland in the Far East.

After he graduated from a Moscow university, Soviet intelligence sent him back to the U.S. in the 1940s. He was drafted and assigned to the Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic weapons.

Other Soviet spies also got into the project, but Koval was “the only Soviet agent who infiltrated secret U.S. nuclear facilities which produced plutonium, enriched uranium and polonium for building atomic weapons,” a statement from Putin’s office said.

In 1949, the year the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb, Koval went back to Russia, fearing exposure.

He died in Moscow last year, aged 93.

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