Blokhin and the post-Stalin purges

[pannonian]

How did Vasili Blokhin survive the post-Stalin cleansing? Most agents of the security organ were periodically purged, and the last major survivors such as Beria and Abakumov were killed in the post-Stalin purges, as the magnates tried to disassociate themselves from the past. How did Blokhin, who personally accounted for a quarter of the Katyn killings, survive with just a demotion? Was it because he wasn't a decisionmaker, and thus of no threat to the politicians?

Try not to bring heat into this please, and don't widen the discussion to Russia and Russians in general. Keep the discussion to Blokhin and the Soviet state in the period immediately following Stalin's death (1953-1955), as per the topic. If you can't discuss within these confines, keep out of the thread.

[Jenuensis]

Good question.. Maybe he wasn't too sharp in politics & his drinking made him look as not a real threat.

[RomanSoldier9001]

He was a good hangman one that even Stalind coultn effort to lose xD.

[Odovacar]

Making a distance between you and Stalin doesnt mean you punish every wrongdoer of Stalin-era. Beria was widely hated and he had political power for example. I think I've read some soviet general cooperated in his trial because Beria was a rapists or such, but eventually in politics rats like Beria meet doom if they cross someone's path, not because of justice.

Blokhin was not important, and I am sure the soviets didn't mind Katyn at all. Kruschev himself executed people zelaously on Stalin's orders.
On a final note..he committed "suicide" that does not mean suicide every time in SU