34 The Young Broz
socialists, radicals, and communists, was in power there. This was why the
members of the CC CPY decided to seek refuge in the French capital, followed
by other prominent Yugoslav communists. When in the spring of 1938 Hitler
annexed Austria to the Third Reich, three Slovenes also came to Paris: Boris
Kidrič with his wife Zdenka, and Lovro Kuhar, a talented Carinthian writer
known under the pseudonym Prežihov Voranc. He was given the management
of the party’s bookshop and under this cover acted as a middleman between
communists scattered throughout Europe. They were a group of lively intel-
lectuals, among whom Broz was probably less educated but certainly no less
cultured, thanks to his great experience and his love for books.^143 They lived in
modest apartments and met in coffeehouses and bistros, acting more like bohe-
mians than professional revolutionaries. Between 1937 and 1938 Tito resided in
different boroughs in Paris, first in a small hotel in the Latin Quarter. He could
stay no longer than a month in the same arrondissement because that would
mean registering with the police. Therefore, he often changed his address, gen-
erally remaining in the city’s center.^144
From home Broz brought “interesting and optimistic” news, as Gorkić wrote
in a report to the Comintern. As an expert cadre, he was immediately sent to
Central Europe to “liquidate” the technical apparatus the CPY had used in
Vienna and Prague to publish newspapers, leaflets, and propaganda material.
This mission accomplished, he returned to Yugoslavia at the end of April and
went to Paris again in mid-May, leaving there at the beginning of June for
Zagreb, always, of course, traveling with forged passports and under fake names.
“It was a dangerous life,” recalled Tito. “I came and went across different fron-
tier posts in Yugoslavia, in order not to be remembered by the policemen.”^145
Something unexpected happened in the meantime. Invited by the Comin-
tern and fearing the worst, Gorkić suddenly left for Moscow on 14 July 1937.
There was no further word from him. “The mist swallowed him,” as he used
to say about comrades who disappeared into the dungeons of the NKVD.^146
Rumors had been circulating at the IKKI since the beginning of the year that
the leadership of the CPY had made a lot of “stupid mistakes” for which it
should be held accountable, especially the tragic expedition of Yugoslav volun-
teers to Spain. The young secretary general would have been pardoned for this
had he not been caught in the machinery of internal NKVD infighting, which
destroyed him. The call to Moscow did not presage anything good for Gorkić,
whose own wife, when arrested, denounced him to the secret police. On 19
August it was his turn to be arrested on false accusations that he was a British
spy and an enemy of the people. He was shot on 1 November 1937.^147 The Yugo-
slav diaspora in Paris, however, had no idea of what was going on, although
rumor had it that “Gorkić was itching to be off.”^148