The Young Broz 21
him like a “gossipy old woman”).^74 The latter rewarded him by proposing to
send him for a short time to a “sanatorium” (what would today be called a spa)
for party functionaries in Crimea. According to Nikita Bondarev, the historian
who studied Broz’s Moscow years, the sanatorium could also have been the
Lubianka, the infamous seat of the Soviet secret police, where its agents tried
to recruit promising new collaborators (or cadres, as officials were often called)
by hook or by crook.^75
On 21 May 1935, after Broz had returned, Karaivanov certified that “from
the political point of view, Broz deserves trust.”^76 This was also confirmed by
Čopić and by the powerful director of the Cadre Department, the Bulgarian
Georgi Damianov, alias Belov, although from the very beginning he did not
like him. Later on, the Executive Committee of the Comintern suggested that
the CC CPY propose the candidature of “Comrade Walter Friedrich”—Broz’s
new code name—as a “political referee” to the Balkan Department, led by the
German communist Wilhelm Pieck. The CC CPY unanimously approved the
proposal.^77
At that time, the Comintern was headed by the legendary Georgi Dimitrov,
the Bulgarian revolutionary who had been implicated in the arson of the Reich-
stag in Berlin but had been acquitted by German judges thanks to his brave
and efficient defense. The newcomer soon entered his good graces. Although
Broz did not excel in Marxist theory, he was considered a faithful communist,
and one of the few Yugoslavs capable of practical work.^78 In spite of his lack
of education, Broz (now known as Walter) was occasionally called to lecture at
the Yugoslav section of the International Leninist School (Medžunarodnaja
Leninskaja Škola) and at the Communist University for the Ethnic Minorities
of the West (Kommunisticheskij Univerzitet Nacional’nyh Men’shinstv Zapada;
KUNMZ). His experience at Lepoglava and in other prisons led him to believe
that the CPY would be unable to overcome the crises that plagued it unless it
succeeded in eliminating its internal struggles. But the situation he found in
the Yugoslav colony in Moscow, which numbered around nine hundred per-
sons, was similar to the one at home.^79 As he said later, he tried to avoid the
“comrades” as much as possible, in part because he loved solitude, to which he
had grown accustomed while behind bars, in part because he soon realized that
in Moscow silence was golden, “Especially in rooms with a telephone.”^80 It was
taken for granted that telephones were bugged, so the less said, the better. He
completely dedicated himself to his work, attending courses in management
and conspiracy techniques as well as the famous Frunze Military Academy.^81
As he later wrote, “As far as possible I used this period for study; I went only
from the Hotel Lux to the Comintern building and back. This is probably what
saved me from Stalin’s knife.”^82 His cautious behavior is likewise noted in the