Kopinič Josip

Josip Kopinič, submariner, communist, secret agent, vice admiral, and businessman

Josip Kopinič, also known as Ramón Valdés, Vazduh, Voškin, Mali, Aleksandar, Nino Brozović, Antun Kadić, is doubtlessly one of the most mysterious, exciting and fascinating protagonists in the history of Slovenian, Yugoslav and world maritime affairs and the communist movement.

 

Born in 1911 in the village of Radoviči near Metlika, he enrolled, in 1928 after completing his schooling in Ljubljana, at the naval engineering school at Kumbor in the Bay of Kotor (Montenegro) and eventually became a non-commissioned officer in the Yugoslav Royal Navy. As a trained electrician, he worked on board the submarine Nebojša, one of the four vessels of this kind in the Yugoslav Navy. Soon he became well acquainted not only with the functioning of electrical systems, but also with the functioning of submarine operations. As he was already under the influence of Janez Marentič, a close friend from his Ljubljana years and member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, he also became an active communist and organizer of the first illegal party cells among mariners and non-commissioned officers in Kotor Bay.

 

When several communist cells were stamped out by the Police in 1934, he took refuge, with the help of the Slovene writer Lovro Kuhar (Prežih Voranc), in Vienna, where he participated in the revolutionary riots and aided the refugees to take shelter in Czechoslovakia, a progressive and democratic country at that time.

 

From Prague he travelled to Moscow as a reliable communist cadre. At the "Communist University of the National Minorities of the West" he met, for the very first time, Josip Broz-Tito, who lectured there and was a little older than him. Both became noteworthy for the Comintern as reference persons for the Balkan area.

 

Later on, in Paris, Kopinič established genuine friendly relations with Tito, which had a significant impact on the further course of Yugoslav history and Tito's political rise. Kopinič became one of the most competent and influential agents of the Comintern, and an important link between Tito and Stalin within the context of Yugoslav events. He operated in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Austria as well as Greece, the country of origin of his wife Stella, with whom he had three daughters; Meri, Zvezdana and Vesna. He protected Tito at all times and even saved his life from Stalin's purges, as Tito was not well known in the Kremlin due to his fairly independent activities prior to World War II.

 

In 1936, after the fascist coup by General Francisco Franco and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Kopinič found himself, as a capable soldier, mariner and informant, in a group of the first five foreign volunteers in the first ranks of the Spanish Republican Army. He fought in Madrid together with his comrade from Moscow times, Enrique Lister, commander of the famous 5th Regiment.

 

In Extremadura, he operated as a saboteur behind enemy lines, then set up a makeshift shipyard at the Cartagena Navy base to repair practically unusable vessels and trained new officers of the severely truncated Spanish Navy.

 

The legendary breakthrough by a squadron of three submarines that sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar and ran the blockade set up by the Francoist fleet off the north coast of Spain near the besieged cities of Gijon and Santander will remains in the annals of the Spanish Republic for all times. The submarine C-6, which according to Spanish sources was the only one to fight without hesitation against Franco's Navy, considering that Spanish commanders were highly indecisive, was commanded by Russian Captain Ivan Alexandrovich Burmistrov, while its first officer was Ramón Valdés alias Josip Kopinič.

 

After this exploit, Valdés became Captain in the Spanish Republican Navy, which was the highest rank held by any foreign fighter in the Spanish Republican Army. Just before the Republic’s defeat, the Spanish Government, which had taken refuge in Valencia after the fall of Madrid, sent him to France with a Spanish diplomatic passport to hasten the overhaul of two submarines in Bordeaux.

 

In France, German Gestapo informants who were plotting against the Spanish Republic, did their best to prevent the submarines from leaving the port and to hand them over to France. But the diplomat “Ramón Valdés” outwitted them by sailing unannounced with his Russian colleagues in repaired submarines to Cartagena. Thanks to him, the submarines broke for the second time through the Francoist blockade in the Straits of Gibraltar.

 

After his diplomatic-intelligence period in Paris where he helped, inter alia, the “fifth columnist” Tito, and after returning to Moscow, he was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral of the Soviet Navy. He continued his intelligence work for the Soviet Union and collaborated with Tito. During World War II, he established the first radio connection between Moscow, the Balkans and Italy in Zagreb, and as a fighter in the National Liberation Struggle earned the rank of commander in the Yugoslav People’s Army.

 

Kopinič also worked for the Soviet Union in agreement with the Yugoslav government from Istambul and Ancara, as intelligence officer, in the post-war period. During the increasingly strained relations between Stalin and Tito he helped the last one with valuable information. After the Cominform crisis and the expulsion of the Yugoslav Party from the Soviet communist camp in 1948, Kopinič decided to return to Yugoslavia. In the face of his friendship with Tito and the help he was always ready to offer to him, he did not suffer any consequences on the account of his intelligence work for Moscow. In 1952, he assumed the management of the Uljanik Shipyard in Pula as its first director. With his expertise and organizational capacities, he quickly contributed to the building of the first cargo ship and, eventually, to the lifting and rebuilding of the sunken Italian auxiliary ship Ramb III, once utilized for banana transport from Africa. In the Pula shipyard, the famous Tito's ship Galeb was reconstructed from it, now designated a cultural heritage of the Republic of Croatia. After 12 years of his successful management of Uljanik, Kopinič was appointed director of the Litostroj industrial complex in Ljubljana. He managed it until his retirement in1969. He died in Ljubljana in 1997 at the age of 86.

 

Franco Juri

 

Additional information about the life of Josip Kopinič can be found in the following publications: Naši Španci, založba Borec, Ljubljana, 1978; Vjenceslav Cenčić: Enigma Kopinič, Svedočanstva, Izdavačka radna organizacija "Rad", 1983; Igor Grdina: Josip Kopinič, Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete, ZRC SAZU 2010; Jože Pirjevec: Tito in tovariši, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 2011.