At a secret meeting arranged with his guards, he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union's spy service, the MGB. In an interview, Blake was once asked: "Is there one incident that triggered your decision to effectively change sides?" Blake responded:
It was the relentless bombing of small Korean villages by enormous American Flying Fortresses. Women and children and old people, because the young men were in the army. We might have been victims ourselves. It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to me defenceless people. I felt I was on the wrong side ... that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war.
