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?
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