Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

by United States. Warren Commission

Return to the United States

In view of the intensity of his earlier commitment to the Soviet Union, a great change must have occurred in Oswald’s thinking to induce him to return to the United States. The psychological effects of that change must have been highly unsettling. It should be remembered that he was not yet 20 years old when he went to the Soviet Union with such high hopes and not quite 23 when he returned bitterly disappointed. His attempt to renounce his citizenship had been an open expression of hostility against the United States and a profound rejection of his early life. The dramatic break with society in America now had to be undone. His return to the United States publicly testified to the utter failure of what had been the most important act of his life.

Marina Oswald confirmed the fact that her husband was experiencing psychological difficulties at the time of his return. She said that “immediately after coming to the United States Lee changed. I did not know him as such a man in Russia.”[C7-205] She added that while he helped her as he had done before, he became more of a recluse, that “[he] was very irritable, sometimes for a trifle” and that “Lee was very unrestrained and very explosive” during the period from November 19, 1962 to March of 1963.[C7-206]

After the assassination she wrote that:

In general, our family life began to deteriorate after we arrived in America. Lee was always hot-tempered, and now this trait of character more and more prevented us from living together in harmony. Lee became very irritable, and sometimes some completely trivial thing would drive him into a rage. I myself do not have a particularly quiet disposition, but I had to change my character a great deal in order to maintain a more or less peaceful family life.[C7-207]

Marina Oswald’s judgment of her husband’s state of mind may be substantiated by comparing material which he wrote in the Soviet Union with what he wrote while on the way back to the United States and after his return. While in the Soviet Union he wrote his longest and clearest piece of work, “The Collective.” This was a fairly coherent description of life in that country, basically centered around the radio and television factory in which he worked.[C7-208] While it was apparently intended for publication in the United States, and is in many respects critical of certain aspects of life in the Soviet Union, it appears to be the work of a fairly well organized person. Oswald prefaced his manuscript with a short autobiographical sketch which reads in part as follows:

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Oct 1939 in New Orleans La. the son of a Insuraen Salesmen whose early death left a far mean streak of indepence brought on by negleck. entering the US Marine corp at 17 this streak of independence was strengthed by exotic journeys to Japan the Philipines and the scores of odd Islands in the Pacific immianly after serving out his 3 years in the USMC he abonded his american life to seek a new life in the USSR. full of optimism and hope he stood in red square in the fall of 1959 vowing to see his chosen course through, after, however, two years and alot of growing up I decided to return to the USA. * * *[C7-209]

PHOTOGRAPHS OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD TAKEN IN MINSK

COMMISSION EXHIBIT 2891

COMMISSION EXHIBIT 2892

(COMMISSION EXHIBIT 2788)
PHOTOGRAPH OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD
TAKEN AFTER HIS RETURN FROM THE SOVIET UNION

“The Collective” contrasts sharply with material which Oswald seems to have written after he left the Soviet Union,[C7-210] which appears to be more an expression of his own psychological condition than of a reasoned analysis. The latter material expresses great hostility to both communism and capitalism. He wrote, that to a person knowing both of those systems, “their can be no mediation between those systems as they exist to-day and that person. He must be opposed to their basic foundations and representatives”[C7-211]

and yet it is imature to take the sort of attitude which says “a curse on both your houses!” their are two great represenative of power in the world, simply expressed, the left and right, and their offspring factions and concers. any practical attempt at one alternative must have as its nuclus the triditionall ideological best of both systems, and yet be utterly opposed to both systems.[C7-212]

Such an alternative was to be opposed both to capitalism and communism because:

No man, having known, having lived, under the Russian Communist and American capitalist system, could possibly make a choice between them, there is no choice, one offers oppresstion the other poverty. Both offer imperilistic injustice, tinted with two brands of slavery.[C7-213]

Oswald actually did attempt to formulate such an alternative[C7-214] which he planned to “put forward” himself.[C7-215] He thought the new alternative would have its best chance to be accepted after “conflict between the two world systems leaves the world country without defense or foundation of goverment,”[C7-216] after which the survivors would “seek a alturnative opposed to those systems which have brough them misery.”[C7-217] Oswald realized that “their thinking and education will be steeped in the traiditions of those systems [and] they would never except a ‘new order’ complete beyond their understanding.”[C7-218] As a result he thought it would be “neccary to oppose the old systems but at the same time support their cherised trations.”[C7-219]

Expanding on his ideas on how his alternative to communism and capitalism might be introduced, he wrote of a “readily foreseeable * * * economic, political or military crisis, internal or external, [which] will bring about the final destrution of the capitalist system,”[C7-220] and indicated that “preparation in a special party could safeguard an independant course of action after the debacle,”[C7-221] which would achieve the goal, which was:

The emplacement of a separate, democratic, pure communist sociaty * * * but one with union-communes, democratic socializing of production and without regard to the twisting apart of Marxism Marxist Communism by other powers.[C7-222]

While “[r]esoufualniss and patient working towards the aforesaid goal’s are prefered rather than loud and useless manifestation’s of protest,”[C7-223] Oswald went on to note:

But these prefered tactics now, may prove to be too limited in the near future, they should not be confused with slowness, indesision or fear, only the intellectualy fearless could even be remotly attracted too our doctrine, and yet this doctrine requirers the uptmost utmost restraint, a state of being in itself majustic in power.[C7-224]

Oswald’s decided rejection of both capitalism and communism seemed to place him in a situation in which he could not live with satisfaction either in the United States or in the Soviet Union. The discussion above has already set forth examples of his expression of hatred for the United States. He also expressed hatred of the Soviet Union and of the Communist Party, U.S.A., even though he later referred to the latter as “trusted long time fighters for progress.”[C7-225] He wrote:

The Communist Party of the United States has betrayed itself!

it has turned itself into the tradional lever of a foreign power to overthrow the goverment of the United States; not in the name of freedow or high ideals, but in servile conformity to the wishes of the Soviet Union and in anticipation of Soviet Russia’s complete domination of the American continent.[C7-226]

* * * * *

There can be no sympathy for those who have turned the idea of communism into a vill curse to western man.

The Soviets have committed crimes unsurpassed even by their early day capitalist counterparts, the imprisonment of their own peoples, with the mass extermination so typical of Stalin, and the individual surpresstion and regimentation under Krushchev.

The deportations, the purposefull curtailment of diet in the consumer slighted population of Russia, the murder of history, the prositution of art and culture.[C7-227]

A suggestion that Oswald hated more than just capitalism and communism is provided by the following, which was apparently written either on the ship coming back, or after his return from the Soviet Union:

I have offen wondered why it is that the communist, anarchist capitatist and even the fasist and anarchist elements in american, allways profess patrotistism toward the land and the people, if not the goverment; although their ideals movements must surly lead to the bitter destruction of all and everything.

I am quite sure these people must hate not only the goverment but our the peop culture, traditions, heritage and very people itself, and yet they stand up and piously pronouce themselfs patriots, displaying their war medles, that they gained in conflicts long-past between themselfs.

* * * * *

I wonder what would happen it somebody was to stand up and say he was utterly opposed not only to the goverments, but to the people, too the entire land and complete foundations of his socically.[C7-228]

Oswald demonstrated his thinking in connection with his return to the United States by preparing two sets of identical questions of the type which he might have thought he would be asked at a press conference when he returned. With either great ambivalence or cold calculation he prepared completely different answers to the same questions. Judged by his other statements and writings, however, he appears to have indicated his true feelings in the set of answers first presented and to have stated in the second what he thought would be least harmful to him as he resumed life in the United States. For example, in response to his questions about his decision to go to the Soviet Union, his first draft answered “as a mark of dicuss and protest against american political policies in foriengn countrys, my personal sign of discontent and horror at the misguided line of resoning of the U.S. Goverment.”[C7-229] His second answer was that he “went as a citizen of the U.S. (as a tourist) residing in a forieng conutry which I have a perfect right to do. I went there to see the land, the people and how their system works.”[C7-230]

To the question of “Are you a communits?” he first answered “Yes, basically, allthough I hate the USSR and socialist system I still think marxism can work under different circumstances.”[C7-231] His second answer to this question was, “No of course not, I have never even know a communist, outside of the ones in the USSR but you can’t help that.”[C7-232] His first set of questions and answers indicated his belief that there were no outstanding differences between the Soviet Union and the United States, “except in the US. the living standard is a little higher, freedoms are about the same, medical aid and the educational system in the USSR is better than in the USA.”[C7-233] In the second simulated transcript which ended with the statement “Newspapers, thank you sir; you are a real patriot!!” he apparently concluded that the United States offered “freedom of speech travel outspoken opposition to unpopular policies freedom to believe in god,” while the Soviet Union did not.[C7-234]

Despite the hatred that Oswald expressed toward the Soviet Union after his residence there, he continued to be interested in that country after he returned to the United States. Soon after his arrival he wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington requesting information on how to subscribe to Russian newspapers and magazines and asked for “any periodicals or bulletins which you may put out for the beneifit of your citizens living, for a time, in the U.S.A..”[C7-235] Oswald subsequently did subscribe to several Soviet journals.[C7-236] While Marina Oswald tried to obtain permission to return to the Soviet Union she testified that she did so at her husband’s insistence.[C7-237]

In July of 1963, Oswald also requested the Soviet Union to provide a visa for his return to that country.[C7-238] In August of 1963, he gave the New Orleans police as a reason for refusing to permit his family to learn English, that “he hated America and he did not want them to become ‘Americanized’ and that his plans were to go back to Russia.”[C7-239] Even though his primary purpose probably was to get to Cuba, he sought an immediate grant of visa on his trip to Mexico City in late September of 1963.[C7-240] He also inquired about visas for himself and his wife in a letter which he wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington on November 9, 1963.[C7-241]