Vasily Blokhin - Wikipedia

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin (Russian: Васи́лий Миха́йлович Блохи́н ; 19 January [O.S. 7 January] 1895 – 3 February 1955) was a Soviet secret police official who served as the chief executioner of the NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolay Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria.

Blokhin was hand-picked for the position by Joseph Stalin in 1926 and led a company of executioners that performed and supervised numerous mass killings in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign, mostly during the Great Purge and Eastern Front of World War II.[1] Blokhin is recorded as having executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his own hand, including his killing of about 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre in spring 1940, making him the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history.[1][2][3] Blokhin was forced into retirement in 1953 after the death of Stalin and condemned during de-Stalinization shortly before his death in 1955.

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin was born on 7 January 1895 in Gavrilovskoye, Vladimir Governorate into a peasant family. He worked as a shepherd in Yaroslavl Governorate from 1905 to 1910 before becoming a bricklayer in Moscow. Blokhin served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I, rising to rank of a non-commissioned officer despite his young age. After the February Revolution, he was elected the chairman of the Army Committee for the 218th Infantry Regiment. He returned home to help his father before joining the Red Army in October 1918.

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