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© Deutsche Welle
The powerful Soviet dictator kills the wife of the Yugoslav communist figure and this is the reason for his disgust, reveals Marie-Janine Kalic’s book “Tito. The Eternal Partisan”.
The text was republished by Deutsche Welle.
Josip Broz Tito: this man is a true mystery. Give several different facts about your date of birth. And his first name is spelled in several different ways: Joseph, Yoser, Joseph, Joseph. The hypotheses also differ about the nickname of his party, obtained in 1935 in Moscow, which became his second surname: Tito.
From the life of Tito
However, contradictory in the first place, is Tito’s own personality. He comes from an ordinary family, became a guerrilla and a national hero, adores luxury, builds palaces, watches horses, smokes expensive cigars, wears a ring with a large diamond and wears a white marshal uniform with gold embroidery. Tito is the man who is not afraid to oppose Stalin, build “market socialism” and give workers and labor collectives many more rights than they had even at the end of the Soviet Union. He became the leader of the “non-aligned states” and a Yugoslav dictator, who by all means instilled the cult of personality and treated his political opponents ruthlessly.
One of Josip Broz Tito’s secrets is revealed by Munich historian Marie-Janine Kalic in her new book “Titus. The eternal partisan.” It is about the years that Tito spent in Moscow during the greatest purges, and a very personal reason that contributed to his conflict with Stalin. Of course, this conflict was mainly caused by political differences over Tito’s attempt to free Yugoslavia from the dictates of Moscow, but judging by the facts, the personal plot between the two turned out to be very important.
Joseph Broz arrived in Moscow in February 1935. He travels by the ropes and with false documents after being held in a Yugoslav prison for membership of the banned Communist Party and possession of a firearm. The timing of his appearance in the Soviet capital is not, to put it mildly, very appropriate. A wave of arrests and endless demonstrations has taken place in Moscow and Leningrad, exposing “Trotskyists”, including members of foreign communist parties. Comrades from Moscow put Tito up in a small room at the Hotel Lux, where the Comintern activists, isolated from the outside world, and the delegates of foreign Communist parties lived. Tito himself is also a Comintern activist and in this capacity carries the pseudonym “Friedrich Walter”.
The German Communists, staying at the Hotel Lux, often complain about the conditions: the rooms are cramped with no amenities, the bathroom is in the corridor, the kitchen is shared, dirt and rats are common, there is a bathroom a once a week. However, Tito grew up in much harsher conditions in his native Yugoslavia, and life at Hotel Lux seems luxurious: central heating, telephone, hot water, gas stoves in the shared kitchen, dining room, bakery, and even a barber shop.
It is not entirely clear what exactly Josip Broz Tito is doing in Moscow. During several months of his stay, almost nothing is known: Tito seems to have evaporated. It is believed that at that time he probably attended special secret courses of the Comintern, where he trained spies and fighters. This training would definitely work for him later, when he participated in guerrilla fighting against the Nazis in the forests and mountains of Yugoslavia during WWII.
In Moscow, he met with his comrades from the Comintern and discussed with them the situation in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Communist Party, and wrote “characteristics” of his supporters. Such “characteristics” are mandatory for all communists, but author Marie-Janine Kalic states that, contrary to common practice, the documents signed by Tito do not have the character of political denunciations. However, when he notices some negative qualities of the individual party figures, Tito does so on a purely human level: he boils all over the place and tries to pull the blanket towards himself, and cheats on his wife.
When Tito meets Lucy
Titus
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Furthermore, Titus himself is not a saint at all in his own personal life. In Moscow he divorced his wife, Pelageya Belousova, with whom he had not seen since 1929, when he emigrated to the USSR. Tito is very angry with her because she practically abandons her son Zharko, with whom she comes to the Soviet Union. While Tito is in the Yugoslav prison, Pelageya puts the boy in a shelter. Zarko is a difficult child, so he must soon be committed to a prison and his mother does not even know where. With much effort, Tito managed to find his son and take him away. But he also can’t stand up to the stubborn Zharko, who gets involved in various thug companies and engages in robberies.
But there is another reason for Tito’s divorce. At the Hotel Lux he met the young German Lucy Bauer, whose real name was Johanne Elsa Koenig.. Lucy / Johanne was born in Chemnitz, came from a working-class family, was a member of the Young German Communists organization and gave birth to a daughter at the age of 19. A year later, the Communist Party sent her to Moscow to prepare for illegal activities, leaving the girl with her parents in Germany.
Stalin’s ghost
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Soon after, Lucy entered the Gestapo’s field of vision and there was no doubt that she would return to Germany. He became a political emigrant, completed a drawing course, and began working in a radio factory in Moscow. He still speaks very little Russian, so he communicates with “Comrade Walter” in German. At one point, Lucy moves into Tito’s room, where Zharko already lives. The young man unexpectedly befriends his young “stepmother” and even begins to listen to her advice.
But the love between 44-year-old Tito and 22-year-old Lucy didn’t last long. The couple married on October 13, 1936, and three days later Tito was forced to leave Moscow. The then general secretary of the Comintern, the Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov, ordered him to go to Yugoslavia to bring order to the faction-ridden Communist Party. Dimitrov promises Tito that Lucy and Zharko will follow him at the first convenient moment, but this never happens.
The first news of her husband Lucy was not received until March 1937. In the letter, which began with the address “My beloved girl,” Tito assured her that he was doing everything possible to bring her home to Zharko. This is really true: Tito wrote to Georgi Dimitrov several times with a request for intercession, but the Bulgarian got his way.
The end
Ultimately, Lucy Bauer was arrested by the Soviet secret police NKVD, along with more than 4,000 other German immigrants, who were declared “fifth column”, spies, saboteurs and Gestapo agents. Lucy has been charged under the infamous Article 58. She was sentenced to death, although she denied the accusation of espionage. On December 29, 1937, he was shot in Butovo.
George Dimitrov. A critical biography
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Tito has been trying to find out what his wife’s fate is for a long time, but the people who can give him some useful information are also beginning to disappear one by one. It is not known when Tito found out what happened to his young wife. Later, he never talks about her himself. But when his conflict with Stalin broke out in 1948, Lucy’s fate probably played a role.
Behind Tito’s astonishing courage and intransigence in his confrontation with the powerful dictator, who is obviously willing to do anything to destroy him, is not only the desire of the national leader to preserve the independence of Yugoslavia, but also strong personal animosity. And it is probably due to the tragic fate of Tito’s young wife.
