38 The Young Broz
which was supported by the French Communist Party as well as some of the
Comintern circles. Marić was in charge of contacts with Yugoslav economic
émigrés abroad, while Kusovac represented the party in a committee for aid to
Republican Spain. They made a proposal to Walter, suggesting he form a collec-
tive that would provisionally lead the party. In exchange, they asked him to get
rid of all those “comrades” whom Gorkić had put in executive positions, espe-
cially Čolaković, Žujović, and Kuhar, who were allegedly the former secretary
general’s men. Although Walter sent Čolaković to Spain to meet the Yugoslav
fighters and to report about them, this was not enough for Marić and Kusovac.
In fact, he kept Žujović in France and appointed Kuhar as representative of the
party in Paris and editor of its organ, Proleter.^168 In the past, both Marić and
Kusovac had collaborated with Gorkić, but more recently they had quarreled
with him. His “disappearance” offered them the chance to settle accounts with
all those who were close to him. Walter, however, was not ready to accept their
proposal, in part because the functionaries they mentioned had been chosen
by the IKKI and also because he was unwilling to share power with anyone.
He reminded Marić and Kusovac that in December 1936 Pieck had entrusted
Gorkić with the leadership of the party abroad, whereas he was to have the
leadership at home. Since Gorkić had been executed, the responsibility was his
alone, as the only leader left. This made them suspect that Walter wanted to
dominate the party and they accused him of behaving like an autocrat without
any clear-cut mandate from the IKKI. From this point forward the members of
the “parallel center” stopped following Broz’s directives and tried to get in
touch with Petko Miletić in the Sremska Mitrovica prison who, they felt, “was
valuable for the party.”^169 And as if this were not enough, they were joined by
Ivan Srebrnjak (Antonov), an agent of Soviet military intel ligence, who said
that some of Broz’s young collaborators, for instance Boris Kidrič and Ivo Lola
Ribar, were from well-to-do bourgeois families, sons of notorious Freemasons,
and therefore clearly in the service of the Yugoslav regime. Srebrnjak also called
the attention of the IKKI to the romance Walter had in Moscow with a certain
Elsa, a member of the German Communist Party, who was suspected of work-
ing for the Gestapo. He also affirmed that the young woman who brought
party correspondence from Yugoslavia to Paris and back (obviously Herta
Haas) was also a Gestapo spy. For all these reasons, Srebrnjak felt that Walter
needed to explain himself, underscoring his resemblance to Gorkić and inviting
the IKKI to disband the CPY.^170
Broz responded to this offensive by counterattacking, increasing his fight
against the “Trotskyists,” “Fascists,” and “spies” who surrounded him. At the
beginning of 1938 he wrote an article entitled “Trotskyists: Agents of Inter-
national Fascism,” published by Proleter under the pseudonym T. T. He called