42 The Young Broz
was late in coming, however, and his stay in Paris was prolonged. This caused
him a great deal of anxiety, both because he wanted to return to his work in
Zagreb, and especially because he suspected that the delay was the result of
enemy intrigues.
In fact, factional machinations were at their peak. Železar and Obarov
accused Broz of being a Gorkić man and of continuing his Trotskyist policy
because he refused to dismiss people from the old staff who were suspected of
being police informers.^187 They intimated that the party was a “circus,” that it
lacked a real CC, that the Comintern trusted only them, and that “Georgi”
would call them shortly to its leadership.^188 These assertions were not ground-
less, considering that, from the old CC, only Walter and Kuhar were not on the
Comintern’s blacklist. Not so Čolaković and Žujović, who were proclaimed
“Gorkić’s follower number 1” and “number 2,” respectively, and who managed to
stay alive only because they were not within the reach of the NKVD. As if all
this were not enough, Broz risked being arrested since King George VI’s offi-
cial visit to Paris had increased police control. Under the influence of the “par-
allel center,” the French comrades refused to find him a safe apartment.^189
Walter was helped in this awkward situation by Josip Kopinič, called Vokšin,
the Slovene he had met in 1935 in Moscow at the Communist University for
the Ethnic Minorities of the West (KUNMZ). They apparently became friends
not only because both were interested in Marxist doctrine but in women as
well. Kopinič was a mysterious and adventurous figure. He had joined the CPY
during his military service in the Yugoslav Royal Navy, where he had organized
thirteen clandestine cells.^190 When, in 1934, he suspected imminent arrest, he
fled to Moscow, where he began collaborating with the Soviet secret service.
From the start of the Spanish Civil War he fought for the republic and was
among the first five volunteers to join the International Brigades. He distin-
guished himself for his bravery, reaching the rank of corvette captain, and was
sent to Paris as a member of the local Spanish mission.^191 With the help of a
marquise who was a military attaché at the Spanish embassy, he found shelter
for Broz in the former’s mansion and, even more important, he promised to
support him in Moscow. Broz gave him a letter for Dimitrov, with a desperate
appeal to “Comrade Georgi” to do something and “save my family.”^192 Kopinič
delivered it, adding a letter of his own, the closing sentence of which testifies to
how shaky Walter’s fortunes in the Soviet Union were at that time: “I turn to
you as a son to a father, begging you to give me an answer in regard to Comrade
Walter.... You are my last hope, because all the others tell me, when I enquire,
what should be done, that it is better not to ask too much.”^193
Although Dimitrov was favorably inclined toward Broz, he could do no
more than advise Kopinič to get in touch with the Cadre Department of the