Oswald arrived in Minsk on January 7. He was met at the station by two “Red Cross” workers who took him to the Hotel Minsk. Two Intourist employees, both of whom spoke excellent English, were waiting for him.[A13-564] One of them, a young woman named Roza Kuznetsova, became his close friend and attended his 21st birthday party in October 1960.[A13-565] (See Commission Exhibit No. 2609, [p. 271].) On the following day, Oswald met the “Mayor,” who welcomed him to Minsk, promised him a rent-free apartment, and warned him against “uncultured persons” who sometimes insulted foreigners.[A13-566]
Oswald reported for work at the Belorussian Radio and Television Factory on January 13.[A13-567] Two days earlier he had visited the factory and met Alexander Ziger, a Polish Jew who had emigrated to Argentina in 1938 and went to Russia in 1955. Ziger was a department head at the factory; he spoke English, and he and his family became good friends of Oswald and corresponded with him after his return to the United States.[A13-568] The factory, a major producer of electronic parts and systems, employed about 5,000 persons.[A13-569] Oswald’s union card described him as a “metal worker”;[A13-570] Marina testified that he fashioned parts on a lathe.[A13-571] As Oswald later described it, the shop in which he worked, called the “experimental shop,”[A13-572] employed 58 workers and 5 foremen. It was located in the middle part of the factory area in a 2-story building made of red brick. The workday began at 8 o’clock sharp. Work was assigned according to “pay levels,” which were numbered from one to five plus a top “master” level. A worker could ask to be tested for a higher level at any time.[A13-573]
Oswald had hoped to continue his education in Russia, and was disappointed by his assignment to a factory.[A13-574] His salary varied from 700 to perhaps as high as 900 rubles per month ($70-$90).[A13-575] Although high compared with the salaries of certain professional groups in Russia, which in some areas have not grown proportionately with the wages of factory workers,[A13-576] his salary was normal for his type of work.[A13-577] It was supplemented, however, by 700 rubles per month, which he received from the “Red Cross,” and, according to Oswald, his total income was about equal to that of the director of the factory.[A13-578] In August he applied for membership in the union;[A13-579] he became a dues-paying member in September.[A13-580]
Undoubtedly more noteworthy to most Russians than his extra income was the attractive apartment which Oswald was given in March 1959. It was a small flat with a balcony overlooking the river,[A13-581] for which he paid only 60 rubles a month.[A13-582] (See Commission Exhibit No. 2606, [p. 271].) Oswald describes it in his diary as “a Russian dream.”[A13-583] Had Oswald been a Russian worker, he would probably have had to wait for several years for a comparable apartment, and would have been given one even then only if he had a family.[A13-584] The “Red Cross” subsidy and the apartment were typical of the favorable treatment which the Soviet Union has given defectors.[A13-585]
Oswald’s diary records that he enjoyed his first months in Minsk. His work at the factory was easy and his coworkers were friendly and curious about life in the United States; he declined an invitation to speak at a mass meeting. He took Roza Kuznetsova, his interpreter and language teacher,[A13-586] to the theater, a movie, or an opera almost every night, until he moved into his apartment and temporarily lost contact with her. He wrote in his diary, “I’m living big and am very satisfied.”[A13-587] In March or April, he met Pavel Golovachev, a co-worker at the factory, whom Oswald described as intelligent and friendly and an excellent radio technician. (See Commission Exhibit No. 2609, [p. 271].) Oswald helped Golovachev with English.[A13-588] They became friends,[A13-589] and corresponded after Oswald returned to the United States until at least as late as September 1963.[A13-590]
The spring and summer passed easily and uneventfully. There were picnics and drives in the country, which Oswald described as “green beauty.”[A13-591] On June 18, he obtained a hunting license and soon afterward purchased a 16-gage single-barrel shotgun. His hunting license identifies him as “Aleksy Harvey Oswald.” (He was called “Alec” by his Russian friends, because “Lee” sounded foreign to them and was difficult for them to pronounce.)[A13-592] He joined a local chapter of the Belorussian Society of Hunters and Fishermen, a hunting club sponsored by his factory, and hunted for small game in the farm regions around Minsk about half a dozen times in the summer and fall. The hunters spent the night in small villages and often left their bag with the villagers; Oswald described the peasant life which he saw as crude and poor.[A13-593] Sometime in June, he met Ella German, a worker at the factory, of whom he later said he “perhaps fell in love with her the first minute” he saw her.[A13-594] (See Commission Exhibit No. 2609, [p. 271].)
At the same time, however, the first signs of disillusionment with his Russian life appeared. He noted in his diary that he felt “uneasy inside” after a friend took him aside at a party and advised him to return to the United States.[A13-595] Another entry compared life in Minsk with military life:
I have become habituatated to a small cafe which is where I dine in the evening. The food is generaly poor and always eactly the same, menue in any cafe, at any point in the city. The food is cheap and I don’t really care about quiality after three years in the U.S.M.C.[A13-596]
In an entry for August-September, he wrote that he was becoming “increasingly concious of just what sort of a sociaty” he lived in.[A13-597]
He spent New Year’s Day at the home of Ella German and her family. They ate and drank in a friendly atmosphere, and he was “drunk and happy” when he returned home. During the walk back to his apartment he decided to ask Ella to marry him. On the following night, after he had brought her home from the movies, he proposed on her doorstep. She rejected him, saying that she did not love him and that she was afraid to marry an American. She said that the Polish intervention in the 1920’s had led to the arrest of all people in the Soviet Union of Polish origin and she feared that something similar might happen to Americans some day. Oswald was “too stunned to think,” and concluded that she had gone out with him only because she was envied by the other girls for having an American as an escort.[A13-598] But in one of the entries in the diary he appears to have attributed her failure to love him to “a state of fear which was always in the Soviet Union.”[A13-599] His affection for Ella German apparently continued for some time;[A13-600] he had his last formal date with her in February and remained on friendly terms with her as long as he was in Russia.[A13-601]