“Books were written about him, films were made. In intelligence, he was highly respected and appreciated,” said a spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR on December 26, according to the agency.
“In intelligence, he was highly respected and appreciated. He himself jokingly said, ‘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 United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, to spy for the Soviet Union.
He was the latest in a line of British spies whose covert work for the Soviet Union humiliated the country’s intelligence system 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 Soviet and British intelligence, betraying many agents who were later executed, including a network in East Germany,” says a post about his life on the UK government website.
British authorities arrested Blake in April 1961 and he admitted to being 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 inmates and two peacekeepers, after climbing the prison wall with a ladder made of knitting needles.
Blake was smuggled out of Britain in a van and managed to cross Western Europe undetected, crossing the Iron Curtain to reach East Berlin.
He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, where he was honored as a hero.
Reflecting on his life in an interview with Reuters in Moscow in 1991, Blake said he believed the world was on the eve of communism.
“It was an ideal that, if it could have been achieved, it would have been worth it,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin granted the double agent the country’s Order of Friendship in 2007. Putin issued a statement of condolences after Blake’s death, which was published on the Kremlin website.
“Colonel Blake was a brilliant professional with special vitality and courage,” said Putin.
“Over the years of hard and strenuous work, he has made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and maintaining peace on the planet,” added the statement.
British officials believe the spy has betrayed about 42 British agents, although Blake said the true count was around 600.