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Vasily Blokhin was born on 7 January 1895 into a poor peasant family in the village of Gavrilovskoye, then part of the Russian Empire. Blokhin actively participated in the first major Stalinist purge known as the Great Terror or the Great Purge, which lasted from 1936 to 1938 During this time, the NKVD, the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union, targeted and eliminated perceived enemies of the state, including political dissidents, military leaders, and intellectuals, often through fabricated charges and forced confessions.
As the purge intensified, Stalin broadened his repression to include specific ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. This led to Order 485, issued by Stalin to the NKVD, authorizing the mass arrest, interrogation, and execution of ethnic groups, with a primary focus on the mass elimination of the Polish minority living in the Soviet Union.The Second World War began on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Blokhin's most infamous act came in April 1940, when he personally executed thousands of Polish prisoners held at the Ostashkov camp, located near the Katyn forest in western Russia. Setting an ambitious goal of 300 executions per night, he implemented a system for processing the prisoners efficiently. Each prisoner was led alone to a small antechamber, painted red and known as the 'Leninist room,' for a brief identification. Afterward, they were handcuffed and escorted into the neighbouring execution room. This room was designed specifically for the task, with padded walls for soundproofing, a sloped concrete floor with a drain and hose for cleaning, and a log wall where prisoners stood.
On 27 April 1940, Blokhin secretly received the Order of the Red Banner, one of the Soviet Union's highest military honors, for his, what they called 'service' in the operation. His tally of 7,000 executions in 28 days remains the most organized and systematic mass murder by a single individual on record, earning him a place in the Guinness World Records. In total, approximately 22,000 Polish prisoners were killed during the Katyn Massacre—a tragedy that continues to cast a long shadow over Polish-Russian relations to this day.