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]
Personal Relations
Apart from his relatives, Oswald had no friends or close associates in Texas when he returned there in June of 1962, and he did not establish any close friendships or associations, although it appears that he came to respect George De Mohrenschildt.[C7-242] Somewhat of a nonconformist,[C7-243] De Mohrenschildt was a peripheral member of the so-called Russian community, with which Oswald made contact through Mr. Peter Gregory, a Russian-speaking petroleum engineer whom Oswald met as a result of his contact with the Texas Employment Commission office in Fort Worth.[C7-244] Some of the members of that group saw a good deal of the Oswalds through the fall of 1963, and attempted to help Mrs. Oswald particularly, in various ways.[C7-245] In general, Oswald did not like the members of the Russian community.[C7-246] In fact, his relations with some of them, particularly George Bouhe, became quite hostile.[C7-247] Part of the problem resulted from the fact that, as Jeanne De Mohrenschildt testified, Oswald was “very, very disagreeable and disappointed.”[C7-248] He also expressed considerable resentment at the help given to his wife by her Russian-American friends. Jeanne De Mohrenschildt said:
Marina had a hundred dresses given to her * * * [and] he objected to that lavish help, because Marina was throwing it into his face.
* * * * *
He was offensive with the people. And I can understand why, * * * because that hurt him. He could never give her what the people were showering on her. * * * no matter how hard he worked—and he worked very hard.[C7-249]
The relations between Oswald and his wife became such that Bouhe wanted to “liberate” her from Oswald.[C7-250] While the exact sequence of events is not clear because of conflicting testimony, it appears that De Mohrenschildt and his wife actually went to Oswald’s apartment early in November of 1962 and helped to move the personal effects of Marina Oswald and the baby. Even though it appears that they may have left Oswald a few days before, it seems that he resisted the move as best he could. He even threatened to tear up his wife’s dresses and break all the baby things. According to De Mohrenschildt, Oswald submitted to the inevitable, presumably because he was “small, you know, and he was rather a puny individual.”[C7-251] De Mohrenschildt said that the whole affair made him nervous since he was “interfering in other people’s affairs, after all.”[C7-252]
Oswald attempted to get his wife to come back and, over Bouhe’s protest, De Mohrenschildt finally told him where she was. De Mohrenschildt admitted that:
if somebody did that to me, a lousy trick like that, to take my wife away, and all the furniture, I would be mad as hell, too. I am surprised that he didn’t do something worse.[C7-253]
After about a 2-week separation, Marina Oswald returned to her husband.[C7-254] Bouhe thoroughly disapproved of this and as a result almost all communication between the Oswalds and members of the Russian community ceased. Contacts with De Mohrenschildt and his wife did continue and they saw the Oswalds occasionally until the spring of 1963.[C7-255]
Shortly after his return from the Soviet Union, Oswald severed all relations with his mother; he did not see his brother Robert from Thanksgiving of 1962 until November 23, 1963.[C7-256] At the time of his defection, Oswald had said that neither his brother, Robert, nor his mother were objects of his affection, “but only examples of workers in the U.S.” He also indicated to officials at the American Embassy in Moscow that his defection was motivated at least in part by so-called exploitation of his mother by the capitalist system.[C7-257] Consistent with this attitude he first told his wife that he did not have a mother, but later admitted that he did but that “he didn’t love her very much.”[C7-258]