Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Something else happened on that May Day in 1960—the aforementioned shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk by Soviet rockets, an event that stunned the world, although it would be almost a week before ordinary citizens in either the Soviet Union or the United States would hear about it. The worldwide press was full of the international incident for months. Lee, with his still awkward Russian and little if any access to English news sources, could not have failed to notice the way the story galvanized his friends—it was the Soviet Union’s greatest propaganda triumph since the beginning of the cold war. However, when Lee got around to making entries in his diary for the months of May, June, and July, although he apparently was disturbed about the U-2 incident, fearing it might hurt him since he was an American (see later text), he didn’t mention one word about it, writing instead of the May Day parade, the party at the Zigers, picnics and drives in the countryside with Anita and the Zigers’ “mos.vick” car, summer months of “green beauty,” and pine forests that were “very deep.” Unfortunately, Anita Ziger’s Hungarian boyfriend Alfred always came along.637

  By this time, though, Lee’s eye had already been caught by a new worker at the factory, Ella German, a slim, pretty Jewish girl who had worked at the factory before. She had always wanted to attend Minsk University but had trouble getting accepted, possibly because she was Jewish, possibly because she didn’t bribe the right people. However, when a law was passed that factory workers were to be given priority, she finally got into the university on a scholarship. Two years later she got a low grade on an important exam, lost her scholarship, and had to switch from full-time study to night classes—and she had to return to the assembly line at the factory.638 “A silky black haired Jewish beauty with fine dark eyes skin white as snow a beauifel smile and good but unpredictable nature,” Lee would write of her. “Her only fault was that at 24 she was still a virgin, due entirely to her own desire. I met her when she came too work at my factory. I noticed her, and perhaps fell in love with her, the first minute I saw her.”639

  Ella recalled she was twenty-three when they met. She was introduced to Lee the first morning she came back to work, and one day she asked him to help her with some pages of English she had to translate. They began to walk to the park and go to the movies about twice a week. She thought he was a kindhearted person with a good sense of humor. Ella sensed that Lee was very lonely in Minsk and consequently pitied him enough that she didn’t want to reject him. But she didn’t like him enough to consider marrying him either.640

  Soon after they met, information about the U.S. spy plane being shot down was in the news. “What do you think, Ella?” Lee asked her. “Can it damage me because I’m an American?” She reassured him that “no one can say you are responsible.”641

  On June 18, 1960, Lee obtained a hunting license and soon after purchased a 16-gauge single-barrel shotgun.642 Lee joined a local chapter of the Belorussian Society of Hunters and Fishermen, a hunting club sponsored by his factory. But according to KGB records, it was not until September 10 that he actually went out with seven others to hunt for small game in the farm regions around Minsk.643*

  Coupled with his lukewarm (if that) Marxist activism, Oswald’s yen for hunting set off alarm bells at the KGB. Vacheslav Nikonov, an aide to the first KGB chief after the fall of Communism, reviewed the entire Oswald file and told PBS’s Frontline, “Oswald looked very suspicious to the KGB and to the factory authorities because he was not interested in Marxism. He didn’t attend any Marxist classes. He didn’t read any Marxist literature and he didn’t attend even the labor union meetings. So the question was, what was he doing there?”644

  One of Oswald’s hunting companions, Leonid Sepanovich Tzagiko, a lathe operator at Oswald’s plant, said “We set off to hunt. There were five of us…Suddenly, a shot rang out. I asked Oswald, ‘Why are you shooting?’ He said, ‘Look! Look! A hare!’ The others fired, too, but missed. And then we all stopped and discussed why he had shot too soon. He explained that the hare had jumped from under his feet and he was startled and so he shot. I said, ‘You could have killed me. Your gun was pointing right at me.’”645

  Being startled and firing wildly doesn’t mean you’re a bad shot, and missing a rabbit once when you shoot at it also obviously doesn’t mean you’re a bad shot, but somehow, from this meager evidence, conspiracy theorists have concluded Oswald was a poor shot as a hunter and, hence, an unlikely assassin of Kennedy. But his brother Robert doesn’t buy into Lee’s being a poor shot at shooting rabbits, maintaining that Lee had plenty of experience at varmint hunting and knew how to handle himself. “We have shot cottontail rabbits with .22’s on the run, okay? We’ve shot squirrels in the trees with .22’s,” he told ABC in 1993. “My experience with him in the field with a shotgun or a .22 was he usually got his game.”646

  According to Tzagiko, “We didn’t take him [Oswald] again because the head of our group had been warned [presumably by the KGB] not to.”647*Although the military installations in the district were off limits to hunters, his KGB minders feared that Oswald might have some sort of sensing equipment that would allow him to spy on the facilities from a distance.648

  But Pavel Golovachev told author Gus Russo in 1993, “I would say that he wasn’t a spy because when he bought a camera, he couldn’t even put film in it. And it was a very basic camera, a Smena-2, which even a Soviet schoolchild could use, and he couldn’t.” Pavel also said that Oswald couldn’t repair the simplest defect in a radio while working at the Belorussian Radio and Television factory in Minsk.649

  Regarding a report in the KGB files that a coworker of Oswald’s at the radio factory, code-named Zorin, said that Lee was possibly working on a secret radio transmitter at the plant, Pavel says this is nonsense. “He bought one of the cheapest radio sets, and it only had short and long-wave frequencies. He complained that he couldn’t receive certain broadcasts. So, with a kitchen knife, I adjusted the capacitor and it worked fine. I have no doubt he was not a CIA agent. His knowledge was too primitive.” Pavel also reported that Lee managed to rip two wires out while trying to insert batteries into another portable radio.650

  If Lee Harvey Oswald were really a spy for the CIA, as so many conspiracy theorists believe, he seemed to be a singularly inept one.

  Lee settled into Soviet life easily. He found a nearby café where the food wasn’t very good and depressingly unvaried, although it was cheap and he really didn’t care about quality “after three years in the U.S.M.C.”651 In August he applied for membership in the union at his plant and became a dues-paying member in September.652 With the help of friends Golovachev and Titovets, his ability to speak Russian improved. Both likewise improved their English skills and wound up speaking more English with him than Russian. Titovets and Oswald improvised a grisly, taped “interview” with a fictional murderer:

  Titovets: “Will you tell us about your last killing?”

  Oswald: “Well, it was a young girl under a bridge. She came in carrying a loaf of bread and I just cut her throat from ear to ear.”

  Titovets: “What for?”

  Oswald: “Well, I wanted the loaf of bread, of course.”

  Titovets: “Okay. And what do you think—what do you take to be the most—your most famous killing in your life?”

  Oswald: “Well, the time I killed eight men on the Bowery sidewalk. They were just standing there, loafing around. I didn’t like their faces, so I just shot them all with a machine gun. It was very, very famous. All the newspapers carried the story.”

  According to Titovets, “We were just having a great time and, actually, we were laughing our heads off.”653

  Around the same time, Oswald’s diary reflects that he began to view his new homeland with a more critical eye. “As my Russian improves I become increasingly concious of just what sort of sociaty I live in. Mass gymnastics, compulsary after work meeting, usually political information meeting. Complusary attendance at lectures and the sending of the entire
shop collective (except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday, at a State colletive farm. A ‘patriotic duty’ to bring in the harvest. The opions [opinions] of the workers (unvoiced) are that its a great pain in the neck. They don’t seem to be esspicialy enthusiastic about any of the ‘collective’ duties a natural feeling. I am increasingly aware of the presence, in all thing, of Lebizen [Libezin], shop party secretary, fat, fortyish, and jovial on the outside. He is a no-nonsense party regular.”654

  In October, he invited Ella to a party at his apartment. When Lee’s pal Pavel showed up with a young woman named Inna Tachina and made it rather obvious that he had brought her for Lee, Ella, who wasn’t really all that serious about Lee, was nonetheless miffed, and she quarreled with him about Inna. He left his own party to walk Ella to her nightshift at the plant about eight minutes away and apparently smoothed things over, for the relationship continued, but he also started an affair with Inna.655

  Oswald wrote of Inna on a page in his diary he kept separate from the others, one dedicated to his amorous affairs in the Soviet Union: “Enna…from Rega, [Riga] Esonia [Estonia—Riga is actually in Latvia, not Estonia]. Studing at Conservatorie I met her in 1960 at The Zegers. her family (who sent her to Minsk) apparently well off. Enna loves fancy cloths well made shoes and underthings in October 1960 we began to get very close and clemingating [culminating?] in intercourse on October 21 she was a virgen and very interesting we met in such a fashion on 4 or 5 occiations ending Nov. 4 1960 later upon completion of her last year at the Music Con. she left Minsk for Rega.”656

  By December 1, he was having a light affair with one Nellya Korbinka.657 She also made it to the same, separate, long page of his diary dedicated to intimate relations: “Nell…large, five ft. 11. inch, 150 lbs, built proportionly, large…breast hips wide and lovely but very pleasly proportioned, from a village near the polish border of strictly Russian peasents stock. gentle kind womenly and understanding, passionate in heart…she combined all the best womenly features with the kind, simple, Russian hearth I met her through one of her room-mates, Tonka, Nell and Tonka together with three other girls lived in a room at the for. lan. Insit. [Foreign Language Institute] dorm. in Minsk near the victory circle. I began to notice Nell serously only after I had parted ways with ENNA. Nell at first [does] not seem to warrant attention since she is rather plain looking and frieihtingly large. but I felt at once that she was kind and her passions were proportional too her size…after a light affair lasting into Jan and even Feb, we [continued] to remain on friendly but conventional terms.”658

  Lee did not understand that a few of the young women who showed an interest in him were, so to speak, professionals—informants to the KGB. One, Anna Byeloruskaya, wrote the following report to them: “The general mental development of Oswald is low. His views are limited, and he has a very poor appreciation of music, art, and literature.” The KGB, however, thought she might be able to trap him as a spy. They asked her to tell Oswald that a relative of hers was a physicist at the Academy of Sciences, but she got no response from him, Oswald showing as much interest as being told about a new fly in the forest.659

  The woman he remained serious about was Ella German. They continued to see each other and mostly enjoyed each other’s company. After a New Year’s Eve party at her parent’s home, he wrote in his diary, “I think I’m in love with her. She has refused my more dishonourable advanis, we drink and eat in the presenec of her family in a very hospitable atmosfere. Later I go home drunk and happy. Passing the river homeward, I decide to propose to Ella.”660 The next day, January 2, 1961, Lee made his move. He wrote, “After a pleasent handin-hand walk to the local cinima we come home, standing on the doorstep I propose’s She hesitates than refuses, my love is real but she has none for me. Her reason besides lack of love; I am american and someday might be arrested simply because of that example Polish Inlervention in the 20’s. led to arrest of all people in the Soviet Union of polish oregen ‘you understand the world situation there is too much against you and you don’t even know it’ I am stunned she snickers at my awkarness in turning to go (I am too stunned too think!) I realize she was never serious with me but only exploited my being an american, in order to get the envy of the other girls who consider me different from the Russian Boys. I am misarable!”661

  It was difficult for Ella too, “because I knew he was in love with me, and he was all alone here. But I had no deep feelings for him.”662 “I am misarable about Ella” Oswald wrote the day after they parted. “I love her but what can I do? It is the state of fear which was alway in the Soviet Union.”663

  The very next day brought a fateful meeting at the Passport Office in Minsk, which called Oswald in to find out whether he still wanted Soviet citizenship. “I say no simply extend my residental passport…and my document is extended untill Jan 4. 1962.”664

  He covered the remainder of the month in his diary with a single entry: “I am stating [starting] to reconsider my disire about staying The work is drab the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling allys no places of recreation acept the trade union dances I have had enough.”665

  Although he was well off by Soviet standards, he had learned about the peculiar quality of Soviet money, which was more like a sort of military scrip than the money in capitalist countries. You could not invest Soviet money in anything at all except a low-interest savings account, and you didn’t need to save it for medical expenses or your children’s education, since these were covered by the state. It’s only real use was to exchange it for consumer goods and services, and those were severely limited in variety, quantity, quality, availability, and style. It’s not that the parsimonious Oswald didn’t have enough money, just that there was nowhere to spend it.

  It probably wasn’t the bleak Soviet lifestyle, however, that caused Oswald to give up on Russia. It was something much more fundamental. He defected to Russia, of course, because he thought it embodied Karl Marx’s core tenet of a classless society, where the proletariat (working class) was not exploited as he perceived it to be under the capitalism he loathed. But to his considerable dismay, what he found in Russia was not Marxism but Russian Communism, a bastardization and pale imitation of what Marx had envisioned in Das Kapital. Russia’s “classless society” was only a heady theory, not a reality. The commissars drove around in their fancy Ziln cars and spent their idle time at their comfortable dachas, while 99.9 percent of the Soviet population remained poor, were depressed, and led a marginal existence. This jolting realization rekindled—but with much more intensity this time—Oswald’s interest in Cuba, leading him to the view that Castro and Cuba were the last bastion of true Marxism on the face of the globe. It also caused him thereafter to never fail to proclaim that he was a Marxist, not a Communist, which he at one time had assumed was simply a synonym for Marxism.666

  When he later returned to the states, he told a New Orleans police detective that Russia had “fat stinking politicians over there just like we have over here,” and that “they do not follow the great concepts of Karl Marx—the leaders have everything and the people are still poor and depressed.”667 The Warren Commission found that Oswald’s “most frequent criticisms” of Russia concerned the contrast between the lives of the ordinary workers and the Communist Party elite.668 He told an acquaintance in Dallas that the people in the Soviet Union “were poor. They worked and made just enough to buy their clothes and their food…The only ones who had enough money to buy anything else…the luxuries of life, were those who were Communist Party officials…high ranking members in the party.”669 Another Dallas acquaintance said that Oswald “seemed to classify all members of the Communist Party as opportunists who were in it just to get something for themselves out of it…and [he] thought they were ruining the principles which the country should be based on. In other words, they were not true Communists. They were ruining the heaven on earth which it should be.”670 A Dallas friend said that Oswald was “quite bitter” about the disparity between the e
lite and working class, including the fact the former could take vacations down to the Black Sea. When he reminded Oswald, “You were saying everyone got a month’s vacation,” Oswald responded, “That’s true, but you had to pay your transportation,” and it would take, for instance, a year’s salary to go from Minsk to the Black Sea.671 He told another Dallas friend that for the average worker or citizen in Russia, “travel was nonexistent; that a person who grew up in Minsk would probably spend his whole life without venturing far from the city.”672 “I didn’t find what I was looking for,” he summed up his feelings about Russia to yet another Dallas friend.673

  Many have ridiculed Oswald for the superficiality of his understanding of Marxism, and it clearly did not appear to be deep, but his writing reflects that he was also very aware of an important adjunct to Marx’s classless society, the “withering away of the state,” a situation that would exist for a short, unspecified period following the revolution during which time a police state would be necessary to avoid anarchy. But the Bolshevik Revolution was way back in 1917, and Oswald said, “This is not the case, and is better observed [as he did] than contemplated.” If anything, he concluded, the state had actually increased, not decreased the regimentation of every ordinary Soviet citizen.674

  A friend of Oswald’s in Dallas said that in a discussion between the two of them, Oswald indicated that average Russian citizens “didn’t have any freedoms, as we think of freedom, in other words, to get in our car and go where we want to, do what we want to, or say what we want to.”675*

  Oswald’s February 1, 1961, entry in his diary reads, “Make my first request to American Embassy, Moscow for reconsidering my position, I stated ‘I would like to go back to U.S.’”676 Although this February 1, 1961, diary entry says that Oswald made his “first request” to return to the United States on that date, he had done so two months earlier. On February 13, 1961, the American embassy in Moscow received a letter from Oswald postmarked Minsk, February 5: