Briton George Blake, the famous double agent in the service of the Soviet intelligence service KGB, said today on the occasion of his 95th birthday that he was always faithful to socialist ideals.
"If I didn't believe, I would already be dead. I may be at the end of my life, but this is not the end of the road that humanity must go through to reach the ideals of a socialist society," Blake told the Russia 1 channel.
The last survivor of the famous generation of British double agents, who has lived in Russia since the Soviet era, expressed the hope that the collapse of the USSR and the fall of communist rule was only "a stage on the long road to real socialism".
"For the time being, people here, as well as in the West, are not ready for a doctrine that demands so much from a person," Blake said.
A prisoner in North Korea during the Korean War, Blake himself offered his services to the Soviets after witnessing American bombing of civilians.
He leaked the names of hundreds of Western intelligence officers to the KGB and revealed the existence of a secret tunnel in East Berlin used to spy on the Soviets.
Blake was exposed by a Polish double agent, so he was sentenced to 1961 years in prison in Great Britain in 42. Five years later he escaped using a rope ladder.
He then crossed over to East Germany and continued east to Moscow, where he received a hero's welcome.
"95 years... That's a lot for a man and very little for the history of mankind. Memories of the past that I don't regret for a moment (...) make me look to the future with optimism," Blake said in a message that on the eve of his birthday, published by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
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