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

Marina Prusakova’s Early Life and Family Background

Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova was 19 years old when she met Oswald. She was born on July 17, 1941, at Severodvinsk (formerly Molotovsk) in Arkhangel Oblast’, Russia. A few years after her birth, her mother Klavdiya Vasilievna Prusakova married Aleksandr Ivanovich Medvedev, who became the only father Marina knew. As a young girl, Marina went to live with her maternal grandparents, Tatyana Yakovlevna Prusakova and Vasiliy Prusakov, in Arkhangel’sk, where her grandfather died when she was about four. By the time she was seven, she moved to Zguritva in the Moldavian SSR (formerly Bessarabia) to live with her mother and stepfather, an electrical worker. In 1952, the family moved to Leningrad when her stepfather obtained a job at a power station. Marina testified that neither her mother nor stepfather was a member of the Communist Party.

Marina’s Life in Minsk Before Meeting Oswald

In Leningrad, Marina attended the Three Hundred and Seventy-Fourth Women’s School, completing the seventh grade in 1955 before entering the Pharmacy Teknikum at her own request, citing her mother’s poor health. While at the Teknikum she joined the Trade Union for Medical Workers and, in her final year, worked part-time at the Central Pharmacy in Leningrad, graduating in June 1959 with a diploma in pharmacy. After her mother died in 1957 during her second year, Marina continued living with her stepfather but had little contact with him; she testified she was not easily disciplined and was a source of concern. After graduation, she left an assigned pharmaceutical warehouse job after one day and, two months later, went to live in Minsk with her childless aunt and uncle, the Prusakovs, who held one of the best apartments in an MVD building. She started work in the drug section of the Third Clinical Hospital in October 1960, earning about 450 rubles per month, and joined the local Komsomol at about the same time. Her social life centered on cafe meetings with student friends for coffee, newspapers, gossip, and discussions, and she had not attached herself to any particular boyfriend by the time she met Oswald in March 1961.