Comrade Vasily Blokhin; Stalin's trigger finger.

 

The Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian citizens and many of these, were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, during Stalin's purges. Although Stalin's regime built a society on a mountain of corpses, he never personally pulled the trigger. You might say that he hadn't got the stomach for it, so he delegated this "black work" to NKVD officers like comrade Vasily Blokhin, the NKVD's official executioner.

Comrade Blokhin personally executed Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, as well as 7,000 Polish prisoners at Katyn. He also personally executed his NKVD bosses, Yagoda and Yezhov. Blokhin was very meticulous when it came to carrying out the executions. At Katyn, a sound proof building was constructed with a sloping floor to wash away the blood of his victims and he used a German Walther pistol, to shoot the prisoners, at the base of the skull. Blokhin liked to work throughout the night, preferably, when there was a full moon. He wore a leather apron, leather gloves and a leather hat. He's considered one of the most prolific official executioners in world recorded history. Unlike many of his victims, Blokhin survived the Stalinist era but succumbed to chronic alcoholism and committed suicide.