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

Oswald’s Relationship with Ella German

In June, Oswald 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 (Commission Exhibit No. 2609, p. 271). He spent New Year’s Day at the German family home, eating and drinking in a friendly atmosphere and returning home “drunk and happy,” and on the walk back he decided to ask Ella to marry him. The following night, after bringing her home from the movies, he proposed on her doorstep; she rejected him, saying she did not love him and feared marrying an American, citing the Polish intervention of the 1920s that had led to the arrest of all Soviet citizens of Polish origin. In one diary entry Oswald attributed her failure to love him to “a state of fear which was always in the Soviet Union.” His affection appeared to continue for some time; he had his last formal date with her in February and remained on friendly terms with her throughout his stay in Russia.

Oswald’s Growing Disillusionment with Soviet Life

Even as Oswald enjoyed his early months in Minsk, the first signs of disillusionment with Russian life appeared. After a friend at a party took him aside and advised him to return to the United States, Oswald noted in his diary that he felt “uneasy inside.” In a later entry he compared life in Minsk to military life, writing that he had become habituated to a small cafe where he dined in the evening, that the food was generally poor and always exactly the same throughout the city, cheap but of low quality, and that he did not really care about quality after three years in the U.S. Marines. In an August–September entry he wrote that he was becoming “increasingly concious of just what sort of a sociaty” he lived in.

Oswald’s Post-Return Criticisms of the Soviet Union

After returning to the United States, Oswald frequently commented on Russian life. He discussed the Soviet systems of public education and medical care, observed to one acquaintance that everyone in Russia was trained to do something, and discussed with another the system of regular wage and salary increases. His most frequent criticisms concerned the contrast between the lives of ordinary workers and the lives of Communist Party members: he told an acquaintance in Dallas that the working class in the Soviet Union made just about enough to buy clothing and food and that only Party members could afford luxuries; on another occasion he remarked that if he had had as much money as some of the “managers,” he could have visited the Black Sea resorts. He complained about the lack of freedom in Russia, the lack of opportunity to travel, inadequate housing, and the chronic scarcity of food products. To one acquaintance he observed that Party members were all “opportunists,” who “shouted the loudest and made the most noise,” but who were interested only in their own welfare.

Oswald’s Unpublished Manuscript on Soviet Life

Oswald expressed similar views in a manuscript he worked on in Russia and probably intended to publish; soon after returning to the United States he hired a stenographer to prepare a typed draft from his notes. He described the manuscript, which amounted to 50 typed pages, as “a look into the lives of work-a-day average Russians.” The manuscript described the factory where he worked and suggested that political considerations of which he disapproved dominated its operation. He attributed the lack of unemployment to a shortage of labor-saving machinery and to a heavy bureaucratic load that kept “tons of paper work” flowing in and out of the factory and required a high foreman-worker ratio, and noted the presence of “a small army of examiners, committees, and supply checkers and the quality-control board.” He portrayed life in Russia, including life at the factory, as centered around the “Kollective,” headed in his shop by Comrade Lebizen, who enforced shop discipline, attendance at party meetings, and the posting of new propaganda, with walls hung with signs and slogans. Meetings of the Kollective were “so numerous as to be staggering”—in a single month, one professional union meeting, four political information meetings, two Young Communist meetings, one production-committee meeting, two Communist Party meetings, four “School of Communist Labor” meetings, and one sports meeting. All but one were compulsory for Party members and all but three compulsory for everyone (Marina Oswald testified that her husband did not attend the Marxism-Leninism courses given at the factory for Party members and aspirants). Meetings were scheduled not to interfere with work and lasted from ten minutes to two hours; Oswald said no one liked them, that they were accepted “philosophically,” and that at political meetings, especially, everyone paid strict attention, with Party members posted in the audience to watch for the slightest lapse. He also described the well-organized “spontaneous” demonstrations on Soviet holidays or for distinguished visitors, noted that elections were supervised to ensure that everyone voted for Communist Party candidates, and touched on the housing shortage and the corruption it evoked, the “rest-homes” where workers had their vacations, television and the omnipresent radio, and Russian reading habits. He acknowledged that the writing might include only what he thought might be acceptable.