Blokhin and the post-Stalin purges

[Pannonian]

How did Vasili Blokhin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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?

[PanzerJaeger]

He did not seem to have any political ambitions (or any real ambitions at all other than to kill people) which always helped lengthen longevity in the Soviet Union. Then again, how do we know he did escape de-stalinization? He died only two years after Stalin of an apparent suicide. :evilgrin: