The Young Broz 37
close friend, probably not just out of mutual sympathy but out of a common
murky past.^162 In 1948, when the split between Stalin and Tito occurred, dur-
ing a dinner with Aleksandar Ranković, Svetozar Vukmanović (Tempo), and
Krajačić—so goes the story by Vlado Dapčević—he said in anger: “Look how
they attack us, although we have given them our best cadres. Even I have
worked for the Ministry of State Security.” When Krajačić gave him a kick, in
order to warn him to shut up, Broz answered that he had nothing to hide, since
the cadres mentioned were all seated at the table.^163
Tito spoke fleetingly about his stay in Spain with Louis Adamic and with
Vladimir Dedijer, who mentions it in his biography, published by Life maga-
zine in 1952. By Tito’s express desire, however, this information was omitted
in a more complete version of this text, which appeared in a Serbo-Croatian
edition.^164 The memory of Spain was obviously unpleasant for him, especially
considering the testimony given by Leo Mates, a Croatian revolutionary of
Jewish origin and, after the war, one of the most important Yugoslav diplomats.
According to him, in Spain Broz did “dirty work” for the Soviet secret service,
taking part in purges of its adversaries. As a communist he was obliged to assist
them, but he considered it a sacred duty and an honorable task. Tito himself, in
1939 or 1940, indirectly confirmed this in Mates’s home in Zagreb. As Mates
recounts, during lunch he suddenly looked at Anka Butorac, a party activist
seated at the table and said: “It was me who, in Spain, sent your comrade to
die.”^165 The “comrade” was Blagoje Parović, a famous Serb communist and
potential rival for the leadership of the CPY, who had been in disgrace with
Comintern and was killed on 6 July 1937 in a village near Madrid under ques-
tionable circumstances. In fact, he was ordered to go on a suicide mission and
launch an impossible attack (though he may well have been shot from behind
by an NKVD agent, as many whispered).^166
The Fight against the “Parallel Center”Gorkić’s arrest threw a dark shadow on the CPY. The Yugoslav communists,
especially those who happened to be in the Soviet Union or in Spain, were
suspected en masse of being Trotskyists. It seemed that Trotskyism had taken
root in the Russian and in particular in the Polish and the Yugoslav parties,
which therefore were subjected to enormous pressure. While the Polish party
was simply disbanded it appeared, as Gusti Stridsberg remembers, as if the
Yugoslavs were suddenly the victims of a political epidemic. “German com-
munists, above all, but also others, treated them like lepers.”^167
In this troubled situation, with the very survival of the party at stake, a “par-
allel center” was created among Yugoslav refugees in Paris by Ivo Marić, called
Železar, a Dalmatian, and the Montenegrin Labud Kusovac, called Obarov,