User blog comment:HFC 44/Reznov/@comment-356904-20160604210421/@comment-3967954-20160606103812

First off, Vahn has no say over Black Ops' writing. He works on the multiplayer.

Secondly, despite the fact that, yes, Reznov probably died at Vorkuta, this is Treyarch we're talking here, not IW. Woods apparently survived being blown to pieces by a grenade belt, and you actually saw that happen on-screen. Reznov's "death" was never shown. There are several implications that he might actually have survived.

Regardless, he'd be long dead by the events of BOIII, so it's kind of irrelevant now. But the key thing is that whereas Ghost is dead, and you see him die, and IW completely wrote his character off in MW3, Treyarch deliberately left Reznov's fate ambiguous, so no-one can really say with certainty what happened to him. He probably did die, though.