Blokhin joined the
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the
Cheka (the Bolshevik
security agency) in March 1921. He was soon appointed a
platoon commander in the military wing of the Cheka and
its successor agencies. Though records are scant, he was evidently noted for both his pugnacity and his mastery of what
Joseph Stalin termed
chernaya rabota ("
wetwork", or literally, "black work"):
assassinations,
torture,
intimidation, and
executions conducted clandestinely. Once he gained Stalin's attention, Blokhin was quickly promoted and within six years was appointed the head of the purposefully created
Kommandatura Branch of the Administrative Executive Department of the
NKVD. Headquartered at the
Lubyanka in
Moscow, its members were all approved by Stalin and took their orders directly from him, which ensured the unit's longevity despite three bloody purges of the NKVD. Blokhin, as chief executioner of the NKVD, had the official title of
commandant of the internal prison at the Lubyanka, which allowed him to carry out his duties with a minimum of scrutiny and no official paperwork. Although most of the estimated 828,000
Role in the Katyn massacre Blokhin's most infamous act was the April 1940
execution by shooting of about 7,000
Polish prisoners interned in the
prisoner of war camp in
Ostashkov, located in the
Katyn forest. The majority were military and police officers who had been captured following the
Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. The event's infamy stems in part from the Stalin regime's ordering of the murders, and the subsequent
Allied propaganda campaign which blamed
Nazi Germany for the massacres in order to preserve cohesion between the USSR and other allied nations. In 1990,
Mikhail Gorbachev gave the Polish government the files on the massacres at Katyn,
Starobilsk and
Kalinin (now Tver) as part of
Glasnost, revealing Stalin's involvement. Based on the 4 April secret order from Stalin to NKVD Chief
Lavrentiy Beria as well as
NKVD Order No. 00485, which still applied, the executions were carried out over 28 consecutive nights at the specially constructed basement execution chamber at the NKVD headquarters in Kalinin, and were assigned, by name, directly to Blokhin, making him the official executioner of the NKVD. Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night, and engineered an efficient system in which the prisoners were individually led to a small
antechamber — which had been painted red and was known as the "Leninist room" — for a brief and cursory positive identification, before being handcuffed and led into the execution room next door. The room was specially designed with padded walls for
soundproofing, a sloping concrete floor with a drain and hose, and a log wall for the prisoners to stand against. Blokhin would stand waiting behind the door in his executioner garb: a leather butcher's
apron, leather hat, and shoulder-length leather gloves. Then, without a hearing, the reading of a sentence or any other formalities, each prisoner was brought in and restrained by guards while Blokhin shot him once in the base of the skull with a German
Walther Model 2
.25 ACP pistol. He had brought a briefcase full of his own Walther pistols, since he did not trust the reliability of the standard-issue Soviet
TT-30 for the frequent, heavy use he intended. The use of a German pocket pistol, which was commonly carried by German police and intelligence agents, also provided
plausible deniability of the executions if the bodies were discovered later. An estimated 30 local NKVD agents, guards and drivers were pressed into service to escort prisoners to the basement, confirm identification, then remove the bodies and hose down the blood after each execution. Although some of the executions were carried out by Senior Lieutenant of State Security Andrei Rubanov, Blokhin was the primary executioner and, true to his reputation, liked to work continuously and rapidly without interruption. Blokhin and his team worked without pause for 10 hours each night, with Blokhin himself executing an average of one prisoner every three minutes. On 27 April 1940, Blokhin secretly received the
Order of the Red Banner and a modest monthly pay premium as a reward from Stalin for his "skill and organization in the effective carrying out of special tasks". His tally of 7,000 shot in 28 days remains the most organised and protracted
mass murder by a single individual on record, and caused him being named the
Guinness World Record holder for "Most Prolific Executioner" in 2010. ==Death==