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

第二章 With the assistance of Agent in Charge Sorrels of the

Toward the end of his waiting period in Moscow, Oswald granted interviews to two women journalists—Aline Mosby of United Press International on November 13 and Priscilla Johnson of the North American Newspaper Alliance on November 16—during which he explained his Marxist convictions, claimed he had never met a Communist in the United States, and expressed frustration at the slow processing of his request for Soviet citizenship. On January 4, 1961, he was issued Identity Document for Stateless Persons No. 311479 and informed he was being sent to Minsk, an industrial city about 450 miles southwest of Moscow, where he reported for work at the Belorussian Radio and Television Factory on January 13, was assigned to the experimental shop as a metal worker, and received a 700–900 ruble monthly salary supplemented by a 700-ruble “Red Cross” subsidy along with a rent-free riverside apartment—treatment the report describes as typical of the favorable arrangements the Soviet Union extended to defectors. Although his early months in Minsk were comfortable and friendly, with picnics, hunting trips under the name “Aleksy Harvey Oswald,” and close relationships with coworkers Pavel Golovachev, Roza Kuznetsova, and Ella German, signs of disillusionment began to emerge, culminating in German’s rejection of his marriage proposal in January 1960 and his growing recognition of the privileges enjoyed by Communist Party members compared with ordinary workers, themes he developed in a fifty-page manuscript on daily Soviet life. By the one-year anniversary of his residence permit, Oswald had decided against pursuing Soviet citizenship, writing in his diary that the work was “drab,” that his money had “nowhere to be spent,” and that he had “had enough,” asking instead that his stay in Minsk be extended for another year.