The Young Broz 35
Because the CPY had been practically decapitated—Ivan Grzetić, the rep-
resentative of the party at the Comintern, also disappeared—Rodoljub Čola-
ković and Sreten Žujović proposed to “Walter” that he assume leadership. Of
all the members of the CC, he was best suited for this task, not only because
of his critical attitude toward Gorkić but also because of his impeccable past
and his working-class origins.^149 In mid-August Čola ković and Žujović urged
him to come to Paris as soon as possible to explain to him what had happened.
“This is all we need,” was his sorrowful comment.^150 At first he hesitated to
accept their proposal, since it was dangerous to do so without the Comintern’s
approval, then he agreed. As unofficial leader of the party, at the end of August
he queried Moscow about Gorkić’s silence and the lack of information forth-
coming. When he received no answer, a month later he sent Pieck a telegram
asking the same questions. Again no answer. Even worse, the Yugoslav com-
munists in Paris found themselves in financial trouble because there was no
money coming from the USSR. Walter’s position was so precarious that he was
unable to get a visa for the USSR from the Soviet diplomatic authorities.^151 After
several weeks, in mid-December 1937, a letter came from Pieck with the news
about Gorkić’s fall and with an order for “Otto” (another of Broz’s codenames)
to see to the Yugoslav “branch” of the party. Shortly afterward, he was informed
that Gorkić and his wife had been arrested on charges of espionage. This did
not surprise him, because he had already suspected that the former secretary
general—as his NKVD friends had confided—was a British spy, having spent
a short time in an English prison some years before.^152 Walter did not pity him,
considering him a “straw man,” politically formed abroad, and therefore with no
authority to represent the Yugoslav working masses. In Broz’s opinion, Gorkić
had acted systematically against the CPY, especially against those members
who came—like Broz himself—from the proletarian class. He even suspected
him of having plotted with Serb nationalists in order to “liquidate” the party.
“In the country nobody knows him,” he wrote about Gorkić to Dimitrov,
“except for a few unimportant intellectuals.”^153 He later told Louis Adamic that
Gorkić “beyond a shadow of a doubt” had been at the service of King Aleksan-
dar’s regime and other dark forces, including the Jesuits. Only at the end of his
life did Tito admit that “Gorkić was not a spy, as they accuse him.”^154
Along with the provisional leadership of the CPY in 1937–38, Walter was given
another delicate task, about which little is known. According to Josip Kopinič,
he had inherited the role of intermediary between the Soviet Union and Spain
from Gorkić. This included contacts with the fourth section of the NKVD,
which was charged with the repression of Trotskyists (i.e., anarchists, especially
numerous in Catalonia). According to another document from the archive of