Dear Robert
Well, what shall we talk about, the weather perhaps? Certainly you do not wish me to speak of my decision to remain in the Soviet Union and apply for citizenship here, since I’m afraid you would not be able to comprehend my my reasons. You really dont know anything about me. Do you know for instance that I have waited to do this for well over a year, do you know that I * * * [phrase in Russian] speak a fair amount of Russian which I have been studing for many months.
I have been told that I will not have to leave the Soviet Union if I do not care to. this than is my decision. I will not leave this country, the Soviet Union, under any conditions, I will never return to the United States which is a country I hate.
Someday, perhaps soon, and than again perhaps in a few years, I will become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but it is a very legal process, in any event, I will not have to leave the Soviet Union and I will never * * * [word missing].
I recived your telegram and was glad to hear from you, only one word bothered me, the word “mistake.” I assume you mean that I have made a “mistake” it is not for you to tell me that you cannot understand my reasons for this very action.
I will not speak to anyone from the United States over the telephone since it may be taped by the Americans.
If you wish to corespond with me you can write to the below address, but I really don’t see what we could take about if you want to send me money, that I can use, but I do not expect to be able to send it back.
Lee[A13-539]
Oswald’s statement that he had been told that he could remain in Russia was not true. According to his diary, he was not told until later that he could remain even temporarily in Russia,[A13-540] and only in January was he told that he could remain indefinitely.[A13-541] The Embassy tried to deliver a typed copy of a telegram from his brother John on November 9; Oswald refused to answer the knock on his door, and the message was then sent to him by registered mail.[A13-542]
Toward the end of this waiting period, probably on November 13, Aline Mosby succeeded in interviewing Oswald.[A13-543] A reporter for United Press International, she had called him on the telephone and was told to come right over, Oswald’s explanation being that he thought she might “understand and be friendly” because she was a woman.[A13-544] She was the first person who was not a Soviet citizen to whom he granted an interview since his meeting with Snyder at the Embassy on October 31. Miss Mosby found him polite but stiff; she said that he seemed full of confidence, often showing a “small smile, more like a smirk,” and that he talked almost “non-stop.” Oswald said to her that he had been told that he could remain in the Soviet Union and that job possibilities were being explored; they thought it probably would be best, he said, to continue his education. He admitted that his Russian was bad but was confident that it would improve rapidly. He based his dislike for the United States on his observations of racial prejudice and the contrast between “the luxuries of Park Avenue and workers’ lives on the East Side,” and mentioned his mother’s poverty; he said that if he had remained in the United States he too would have become either a capitalist or a worker. “One way or another,” he said, “I’d lose in the United States. In my own mind, even if I’d be exploiting other workers. That’s why I chose Marxist ideology.”
Oswald told his interviewer that he had been interested in Communist theory since he was 15, when “an old lady” in New York handed him “a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs.” But when Mosby asked if he were a member of the Communist Party he said that he had never met a Communist and that he “might have seen” one only once, when he saw that “old lady.” He told her that while he was in the Marine Corps he had seen American imperialism in action, and had saved $1,500 in secret preparation for his defection to Russia. His only apparent regrets concerned his family: his mother, whom he had not told of his plans, and his brother, who might lose his job as a result of the publicity.[A13-545]
The interview lasted for about 2 hours. According to Oswald’s own account, he exacted a promise from Miss Mosby that she would show him the story before publication but she broke the promise; he found the published story to contain distortions of his words.[A13-546] Miss Mosby’s notes indicate that he called her to complain of the distortions, saying in particular that his family had not been “poverty-stricken” and that his defection was not prompted by personal hardship but that was “a matter only of ideology.”[A13-547]
According to the diary, Oswald was told in mid-November that he could remain temporarily in Russia “until some solution was found with what to do” with him.[A13-548] Armed with this “comforting news,”[A13-549] he granted a second interview, again to a woman, on November 16.[A13-550] Miss Priscilla Johnson of the North American Newspaper Alliance knocked on the door of his room at the Metropole, and Oswald agreed to come to her room at the hotel that evening. This interview lasted about 5 hours, from 9 p.m. until about 2 in the morning. During the interview he frequently mentioned the fact that he would be able to remain in Russia, which gave him great pleasure, but he also showed disappointment about the difficulties standing in the way of his request for Soviet citizenship. He repeated most of the information he had given Aline Mosby and again denied having been a member of the Communist Party or even ever having seen a Communist in the United States. When Miss Johnson asked him to specify some of the socialist writers whose works he had read during the past 5 years, he could name only Marx and Engels; the only title he could recall was “Das Kapital.” They talked for a long while about Communist economic theory, which Miss Johnson thought was “his language”; she became convinced that his knowledge of the subject was very superficial.[A13-551] He commented that the Russians treated his defection as a “legal formality,” neither encouraging nor discouraging it.[A13-552] When she suggested that if he really wished to renounce his American citizenship he could do so by returning to the Embassy, he said that he would “never set foot in the Embassy again,” since he was sure that he would be given the “same run-around” as before. He seemed to Miss Johnson to be avoiding effective renunciation, consciously or unconsciously, in order to preserve his right to reenter the United States.[A13-553]
For the rest of the year, Oswald seldom left his hotel room where he had arranged to take his meals, except perhaps for a few trips to museums. He spent most of his time studying Russian, “8 hours a day” his diary records. The routine was broken only by another interview at the passport office; occasional visits from Rima Shirokova; lessons in Russian from her and other Intourist guides; and a New Year’s visit from Roza Agafonova, who gave him a small “Boratin” clown as a New Year’s present.[A13-554] He replied to a letter from Robert in a letter quoted at length in chapter VII of this report, which contains his most bitter statements against the United States.[A13-555] Robert received a third letter on December 17, in which Oswald said that he would not write again and did not wish Robert to write to him. The letter concluded:
I am starting a new life and I do not wish to have anything to do with the old life.
I hope you and your family will always be in good health.
Lee[A13-556]
His mother mailed him a personal check for $20 dated December 18. It was returned to her on January 5 with the notation that he could not “use this check, of course”; he asked her to send him $20 in cash and added that he had little money and needed “the rest,” presumably a reference to the $100 he had given her in September. Mrs. Oswald later sent him a money order for about $25.[A13-557]
On January 4, Oswald was summoned to the Soviet Passport Office and given Identity Document for Stateless Persons No. 311479.[A13-558] He was told that he was being sent to Minsk,[A13-559] an industrial city located about 450 miles southwest of Moscow and with a population in 1959 of about 510,000.[A13-560] His disappointment that he had not been granted Soviet citizenship was balanced by relief that the uncertainty was ended; he told Rima Shirokova that he was happy.[A13-561] On the following day, he went to a Government agency which the Russians call the “Red Cross”; it gave him 5,000 rubles (about 500 new rubles, or $500 at the official exchange rate).[A13-562] He used 2,200 rubles to pay his hotel bill and 150 rubles to purchase a railroad ticket to Minsk.[A13-563]