World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 83
Yugoslavia Mihailović had planned. The corpses of Muslims, slaughtered by
his Chetniks in revenge for their alliance with the Ustaše and their partici-
pation in atrocities against the Serb population, still drifted in the waters of
the Drina.^185 The fact that the Ustaše were even worse than the Chetniks
spoke in favor of his resistance movement, as the communists were the only
ones who didn’t fan national hatred but stressed “brotherhood and unity”
among Yugoslav peoples. In the new Bosnian environment the movement
recovered quickly, in spite of the terrible cold and hunger suffered by the Parti-
sans. They ate mostly oat bread mixed with dried wild pears and, if they were
fortunate, drank “horse tea,” a thin, meager soup of boiled horse meat with
no salt. “Since then,” said Tito, “I don’t even want to see pears.”^186 He lost a
great deal of weight during that period, even though he was privileged. He
had his own cow for fresh milk and even his own cook.^187 That does not
mean that he did not share the hardships of Partisan life. Josip Kopinič, who
came to Foča from Zagreb, remembers that once they slept together under one
blanket because of the extreme cold. “Do you have lice?” asked Tito. “No!”
he replied. And Tito laughed: “Don’t worry, you will have them soon. I have
them, too.”^188
With Kopinič’s assistance, a direct radio link with Moscow was organized
on 7 February 1942. It was managed by Pavle Savić, a nuclear physicist and
former assistant to Marie Curie—a “man of superior intelligence” according to
those who knew him.^189 This new facility allowed Tito to be independent of
Zagreb’s clandestine radio center, which was reachable only through couriers,
and to get in touch with the Comintern on a daily basis. At the end of February,
on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Red Army’s establishment, Tito sent
an enthusiastic congratulatory message, which was published by the newspaper
Kommunisticheskii Internatsional and by the War News, the bulletin of the Soviet
Embassy in London. This was the first time his name was mentioned in a
Western country.^190 It was not until summer, however, that the leftist papers in
Great Britain and the United States began receiving dispatches from Moscow
with Tito’s reports about clashes between Partisans and occupiers, showing that
the assertions of the Yugoslav government in exile ascribing the successes in
Yugoslavia “to the guerrilla forces of General Mihailović” were lies.^191
After the Battle of Moscow, fortune started to turn in favor of the Soviets.
With this Stalin’s mood improved, and he began to pay attention to the Parti-
sans in Yugoslavia, especially because the London government continued to
ask him to force Tito to cooperate with Mihailović. “It seems,” he said mock-
ingly, “that the Yugoslav Partisans are quite efficient if the English ask us to
help!” And when the royal government in exile reiterated the same request, he
added: “They are not able to reach an agreement with the Partisan movement