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.
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.
[6] 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.
In addition to overseeing the mass executions, Blokhin personally pulled the trigger in all of the individual high-profile executions conducted in the Soviet Union during his tenure,[5] including those of the Old Bolsheviks convicted at the Moscow Trials; Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky (convicted at a secret trial); and two of the three killed NKVD Chiefs (Genrikh Yagoda in 1938 and Nikolay Yezhov in 1940) he had once served.
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.
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.
[15] 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.
[17] 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".