The Young Broz 31
gendarmes who were not used to fighting against communists.^123 These meet-
ings were attended mostly by young people who called him Stari—“the Old
One.” This nickname, used only by the comrades of the inner circle, was
invented by two Belgrade students, Milovan Djilas, of a modest Montenegrin
family, and Ivo Lola Ribar, son of a distinguished solicitor and politician from
Zagreb who was also president of the Constitutional Assembly of the King-
dom SHS in 1921.^124 Ribar was charged by Broz with leading the SKOJ, the
youth organization of the party, which had no secretary at the time, and swiftly
became one of his most trusted colleagues. Between the three, a symbiosis
developed that, as Djilas said, had the character of a “familiar blood bond.”^125
The dictatorship of King Aleksandar and the crises after his violent death
induced many university students to join the CPY. They had not witnessed
the factional struggles of the twenties and saw communism as the only way
to change society. They unhesitatingly believed in Marxist doctrine and were
undisturbed by the news of Stalin’s terror in the Soviet Union, if they even
noticed it. If they did, they hid it carefully. “Nobody was allowed to doubt
openly,” confessed Gojko Nikoliš much later.^126 With no hesitancy, these young
intellectuals and utopian idealists found a charismatic leader in Broz. “The Old
One is the most precious asset of our party,” was the general opinion among
them.^127 From contemporary reports it is known that Broz felt safer in the
apartments found for him by the members of the SKOJ than in those put at his
disposal by regular party members. In that period, the latter were often arrested
by the police, which generally did not happen to young people.^128 Convinced
that it was necessary to get rid of old sectarians and enroll fresh forces in the
party, Broz contacted workers, artisans, students, people from various milieux.
He was fortunate in choosing his collaborators. Apart from Milovan Djilas and
Ivo Lola Ribar, a young Serb named Aleksandar (Leka, also Marko) Ranković,
a tailor by profession who had just finished his military service, was among the
first to join the team.^129 Slovene teacher Edvard Kardelj, whom Broz first met
in Ljubljana in 1934 and later in Moscow, was among them too. Between those
young men and the “Old One,” a relationship of mutual confidence emerged,
completely different from the conflicting and aggressive atmosphere so typical
of the Comintern. Tito liked to say: “If somebody makes a mistake, find the
right word for him, without destroying him. This creates trust.”^130
Among those ardent left-wing adherents Broz also found his new love: Herta
Haas, a pretty student at the Zagreb School of Economics, born to German-
speaking parents but from Slovenian Maribor. Through her, he entered into
contact with the intellectual circles of the Croatian capital, where he met an
aspiring solicitor, Vladimir (Vlatko) Velebit, one of his more important collabo-
rators during the war and a diplomat after it.^131 With the help of these young