The Young Broz 33
conducting a “Bolshevik” struggle against Trotskyists and was building “a new
era in the party.”^138
In this tension-rife atmosphere, Broz insisted on putting his program into
practice. First he decided to implement the decision of the Fourth CPY
Conference, organized in Ljubljana in December 1934, by creating an autono-
mous Communist Party of Slovenia. This decision, approved by the Comin-
tern, was based on the conviction that the Yugoslav Communist Party could
not appeal to the popular masses if it ignored the burning question of ethnic
relations. Although Gorkić had many doubts concerning the need to create
separate national parties under the aegis of the CPY, the task was accom-
plished, according to Broz’s directives, by Edvard Kardelj. On 18 April 1937,
in the house of a local sacristan not far from the mining center of Trbovlje,
he organized the First Congress of the Communist Party of Slovenia, which
included no more than two hundred members.^139 On this occasion, Kardelj
stressed that the Slovene bourgeoisie was not capable of defending the interests
of the nation. It could offer, in the best case, cultural autonomy within the
framework of Yugoslavia. But the national question was not just a question
of culture and language. It could be solved only when the Slovenes received
their own state in this greater body of Yugoslavia, including the right of self-
determination and secession.^140 He remained faithful to this idea for his en-
tire life.
The night of August 1–2, the Communist Party of Croatia was also founded
in the woods near Samobor, at a meeting attended by seventeen delegates and
in the presence of Broz. He also planned the creation of the Communist Party
of Macedonia, which, however, was not founded until 1943. At a time when the
Serbs were all-powerful in Yugoslavia, nobody thought about a Communist
Party of Serbia. (Broz discussed this with his friend Josip Kopinič, trying to
explain that Croats and Slovenes were oppressed by Belgrade’s rule, whereas
the Serbs were not. Kopinič objected, saying that the Serb masses were also
oppressed and that sooner or later they would take revenge because of this
discrimination).^141 Once in power, Tito considered this creation of national
and autonomous communist parties to have been a mistake that undermined
the very foundations of socialist Yugoslavia from the start, because it divided
the Orthodox and Catholic parts of the country. But, as he said with resigna-
tion, quoting a popular saying from his native Zagorje: “It is useless to go to
mass in the afternoon”^142 (mass was traditionally held in the morning). In any
case, the creation of two “national” parties gave new impetus to the CPY, which
underwent a significant renaissance.
At the end of March 1937, Broz left by train for Paris, where the political
situation was better than in Vienna, because the Popular Front, a coalition of