However, she must say: She enjoyed her Intourist job immensely, an adventurous job and patriotic, and connected with protecting her government and her country. She considered herself as doing a very important job that her country needed. So, when she gave her impression of Oswald to her chief, it was to enable them to make an educated decision on what to do. KGB needed intelligent reports. They had to know as many aspects as possible of how this specific person was different from other people, and Alik was different from others. Although she did not think he was a spy from American intelligence, she had never met a spy. So, despite her personal impressions, she had to be careful. Nowadays, if she were working in Intourist, she could analyze him, but in those days, they simply said to her, “Did he meet people in your presence?” They never asked her opinion if he was sincere. She would have told them he was; he is frank and wants to stay. But she wasn’t asked. And, of course, KGB, not Intourist, would make that final decision. Besides, she didn’t know what he did after dinner. Between nine and five, yes, but not after dinner.
November 15
I decide to give an interview. I have Miss Mosby’s card so I call her. She drives right over. I give my story, allow pictures. Later, story is distorted, sent without my permission, that is: before I ever saw and OKed her story. Again, I feel slightly better because of the attention.
November 16
A Russian official comes to my room, asks how I am. Notified me I can remain in USSR until some solution is found with what to do with me. It is comforting news for me.
Priscilla Johnson McMillan, later to write Marina and Lee, would encounter Oswald that day, and he would give her an interview as well:
I had just returned from a visit to the United States and, on November 16, I went to the consular office of the American Embassy, as the American reporters did, to pick up my mail. John McVickar welcomed me back with these words: “Oh, by the way, there’s a young American in your hotel trying to defect. He won’t talk to any of us, but maybe he’ll talk to you because you’re a woman.”
McVickar turned out to be right. At the Hotel Metropole I stopped by Oswald’s room, which was on the second floor, the floor below my own. I knocked, and the young man inside opened the door . . . To my surprise, he readily agreed to be interviewed and said he would come to my room at eight or nine o’clock that evening. Good as his word, he appeared, wearing a dark gray suit, a white shirt with a dark tie, and a sweater-vest of tan cashmere. He looked familiar to me, like a lot of college boys in the East during the 1950s. The only difference was his voice—he had a slight Southern drawl.
He settled in an armchair, I brought him tea from a little burner I kept on the floor, [and he] spoke quietly, unemphatically, and only rarely betrayed by a gesture or a slight change of tone that what he was saying at the moment meant anything special to him . . .
During our conversation Lee returned again and again to what he called the embassy’s “illegal” treatment of him . . . Once he became a Soviet citizen, he said, he would allow “my government,” the Soviet government, to handle it for him.
Lee’s tone was level, almost expressionless, and while I realized that his words were bitter, somehow . . . he did not seem like a fully grown man to me, for the blinding fact, the one that obliterated nearly every other fact about him, was his youth. He looked about seventeen. Proudly, as a boy might, he told me about his only expedition into Moscow alone. He had walked four blocks to Detsky Mir, the children’s department store, and bought himself an ice cream cone. I could scarcely believe my ears. Here he was, coming to live in this country forever, and he had so far dared venture into only four blocks of it.
I was astounded by his lack of curiosity and the utter absence of any joy or spirit of adventure in him. And yet I respected him. Here was this lonely, frightened boy taking on the bureaucracy of the second most powerful nation on earth, and doing it single-handedly . . . .
“I believe what I am doing is right,” he said. He also said that he had talked to me because he wanted to give the American people “something to think about.”3
Now, days started to go by and still they didn’t give an answer. Rimma spent every working day with him. Very long intolerable days. He was upset, he didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t even try to teach him to speak Russian a little because, from a psychological point of view, it was not a time to learn; to her mind, he was in his room too much, thinking and thinking. She didn’t even know whether he was reading her gift—The Idiot. Maybe he had been a little shocked at such a title; could wonder if was personal, yes. And maybe Dostoyevsky was difficult for him, very difficult. He was interested in nothing but his own fate. Very self-centered.
Sometimes he would still say that all people are brothers and sisters, and the Soviets wanted more good for our world than America. But Rimma felt he had come to such ideas without knowing many facts. Very superficial. Not natural. Not deep.
She never said this to him, however, because it would be too easy to hurt his feelings. He knew that too. He would never insult her, she knew, because she could say something back that would show him to be a person who thinks too much of himself and shouldn’t behave as he does. You should know the kind of person you are, she was ready to tell him if he got at all unpleasant—you are just nothing.
“What’s my news?” he kept asking her. Always this same question. And she had a feeling that maybe he was going to ask her to marry him. But he didn’t. Maybe he knew she wouldn’t agree. However, he hinted many times, said how good and how happy he felt being with her. When she went to her chief and asked about his situation, one question they would always ask her is, “What can he do for a living?” Unfortunately, he could do nothing.
Finally, since he had no money, her boss told Rimma they should move him from his present good room to something smaller. They found such a cubbyhole, very small, very modest. His life was going from Deluxe down. Down and down. Which means up. Higher floor, smaller room.
Rimma couldn’t even eat with him. In those days, even if her salary was 100 rubles a month because of her excellent marks, meals at a hotel were too expensive. She went to reasonable places. Then, because they couldn’t afford to give him restaurant meals at his hotel any longer, higher-ups said, “Special meal.” Poorer quality. Of course, he wasn’t always gloomy. Sometimes he was certainly romantic, and would tell jokes, but mostly she had to try to cheer him up. He would say that if he was allowed to stay in her country, he would live in Moscow. Of course, if he married her, it would be easier for him to do that. But she never discussed this with him, and didn’t think he was just pretending that he loved her; she thought his feelings were sincere. But he wasn’t sleeping well. He was thinking of his situation. Always. His Russian didn’t get much better, either—no, no.
November 17 to December 30
I have bought myself two self-teaching Russian language books. I force myself to study eight hours a day. I sit in my room and read and memorize words. All meals I take in my room. Rimma arranged that. It is very cold on the streets so I rarely go outside at all for this month and a half. I see no one, speak to no one, except every now and then Rimma, who calls the Ministry about me. Have they forgotten? During December, I paid no money to the Hotel but Rimma told the Hotel I was expecting a lot of money from the USA. I have $28 left. This month I was called to the passport office and met three new officials who asked me the same questions I answered a month before. They appear not to know me at all.
All this time, no company for him. Maybe at night, when she wasn’t there, somebody could visit. Rimma can’t say for a fact; maybe in the evenings he began to try to find more people. Sometimes he said to her that he spoke with some Russians, so he must have met some people. Maybe it was on his floor.
If he had had more funds, it is possible his behavior would have been a bit different, but he had no warm clothes and no money. It was snowing, he didn’t know Moscow, didn’t know Russian. It was all: “How do you pronounce this word?” “W
hat is Russian for that?”
Most of the time, he was in a bad mood. And it was difficult to get to his room, which was somewhere on top, you see. No rooms for foreigners there. A floor for employees who worked in the Metropole Hotel, Russians. He was there from the point of view of economy, and maybe for surveillance. “That could be a reason, I don’t deny it. Maybe.” She doesn’t know, because girls in Intourist never talked about a room being prepared. They did not talk like that; they did not exercise their head to think that way.
One day, finally, late in December of 1959, just before New Year’s, they called Rimma into Intourist’s main office and told her they were sending Oswald to Minsk. When she informed him, he was so disappointed he even cried at first, with tears, yes, he wanted Moscow not Minsk, but he was also happy he was allowed to stay, relieved and happy. Of course he was happy. He was shining. He did not hide it. But he was still upset he had to go to Minsk.
He had no idea where it was. Had never heard of it. Rimma told him it was a good city, which was true. She often took foreigners to Minsk in a railroad coach on trips. She liked its newest hotel, their Hotel Minsk. People in Minsk, she told him, are much better than in many other places. But he was depressed. He wanted her to accompany him on his all-night railroad trip from Moscow to Minsk, but by now he understood that everything was not so simple as he had thought before—everything was more serious than he had thought. In America, when he took this decision to go to Russia, he must have been like a child, but then in these days he grew up, you see. So now, he understood that even if Rimma wanted, she couldn’t leave her job and go with him. He understood it was impossible. He knew it was a very serious place here.
December 31
New Year’s Eve, I spend in the company of Rosa Agafonova at the Hotel Berlin. She has the duty. I sit with her until past midnight. She gave me a small Boratin clown.
January 5
I go to Red Cross in Moscow for money [and] receive 5,000 rubles, a huge sum!! Later in Minsk, I am to earn 700 rubles a month at the factory.4
January 7
I leave Moscow by train for Minsk, Byelorussia. My hotel bill was 2,200 rubles and the train ticket to Minsk 150 rubles, so I have a lot of money and hope. I wrote my mother and brother letters in which I said, “I do not wish to ever contact you again. I am beginning a new life and I don’t want any part of the old.”
Rimma remembered that on this day he left for Minsk, it was snowing when she said goodbye to him. He was crying and she was crying.
But she did not write to him. It was understood that an Intourist girl was not to write letters to tourists she had guided, and Rimma could not violate such a principle.
REPRESENTATIVE FORD. If you had known that Oswald was in Minsk, what would your reaction have been?
MR. SNYDER. Serves him right.
REPRESENTATIVE FORD. Why do you say that?
MR. SNYDER. You have never been in Minsk . . . Provincial towns in the Soviet Union are a very large step below the capital and the capital, believe me, is a fairly good-sized step down from any American populated place.
But the difference between large cities and minor cities, and between minor cities and villages, is a tremendous step backward in time. And to live in Minsk, or in any other provincial city in the Soviet Union, is a pretty grim experience to someone who has lived in our society . . .
REPRESENTATIVE FORD. Have you ever been in Minsk?
MR. SNYDER. I spent about an hour walking around Minsk, between trains, one time.5
PART III
OSWALD’S WORK, OSWALD’S SWEETHEART
1
Igor
How Igor Ivanovich Guzmin looked when young would be hard to decide in 1993, because his presence spoke of what he was now—a retired general from KGB Counterintelligence, a big man and old, with a red complexion and a large face that could have belonged to an Irish police chief in New York, impressive from his sharp nose up, with pale blue eyes ready to blaze with rectitude, but he looked corrupt from the mouth down—he kept a spare tire around his chin, a bloated police chief’s neck.
Guzmin, Igor Ivanovich, born in 1922, had worked in Minsk for the KGB from 1946 to 1977, and had first been dispatched there by Moscow Center to undertake a “strengthening of cadres,” and in Minsk he had remained for more than half of his fifty years in service. Having walked in as Deputy Chief in Counterintelligence, Minsk, he became Deputy Chief of Branch, and was finally promoted to Chief of Department in Byelorussia. While his arrival came more than a year after the Nazi occupation of Minsk had ended, he could inform his interviewers that one out of every four persons in that republic had died in combat, or in German concentration camps, or under other circumstances. He said no more. His point was that rebuilding had been done in Minsk under difficult conditions. There was not only physical disruption, but a population compromised by collaboration. Certainly, all standing policemen, local army, village headmen—all the persons installed by Germans—had to be seen as collaborators or fascist agents. His State Security office had, therefore, to cleanse everything that you could call an obstruction to reconstruction. Many people didn’t want to take responsibility for their collaborative actions with the Nazis and so had gone underground, which gave the Organs a further task of freeing society from their concealed presence. It was a good deal of work. They weren’t finished dealing with all of that until 1953.
Igor Ivanovich does not, however, recall an episode in any of their security tasks that had been remotely similar to the problems initiated by Oswald’s arrival. Repatriates might be scattered around Ukraine and Byelorussia, but they were Byelorussians, whereas Oswald had been sent here to Minsk as a political immigrant for permanent residence. Of course, foreign agents had been dispatched to Minsk before, members of British or American or German intelligence, sent by air, smuggled across borders—in one manner or another, implanted. Much local KGB work had been concerned with exposing, arresting, and putting such people on trial. Four American agents had been dropped by parachute into Byelorussia in 1951 alone, but Oswald was obviously different and special.
On Oswald’s arrival in Minsk in January of 1960, some reports from Intourist Moscow guides and officials had already come to Igor Ivanovich’s office, so he was furnished with materials on why this young American had been allowed to stay in Soviet territory. It was a small dossier, however. Oswald was being sent to Minsk for permanent residence, and other branches of the local government would take care of settling him in. Igor’s function would be to find out whether Oswald, Lee Harvey, was who he claimed to be. So the most significant document was the one which stated that it had been decided at highest levels to grant Oswald permission to stay after his suicide attempt, even though his attempt may have been staged. There was then, as could be expected, a directive from Moscow Center: Start investigation of this person.
Igor Ivanovich Guzmin had a man in his department who would serve as the developer on this case, that is, would, on a daily basis, conduct their inquiry—an intelligent, efficient man named Stepan Vasilyevich Gregorieff. Igor Ivanovich Guzmin’s reasons for choosing him were as follows: Stepan Vasilyevich was pure Byelorussian, born in the Mogilev region, and knew local ways of life, habits, and such specifics very well. Even more important was his professionalism. He had handled interrogations of captive German spies and British spies; he had been specifically adept at locating and then defining suspect people who had stayed in the West after 1945 but, for various reasons, had now repatriated themselves, and had to be checked. Stepan also knew a little English, and where he would lack fluency, an English-speaking deputy could assist in the translation of documents—as, for example, any letters Oswald might receive from America.
Besides, Stepan’s professionalism was known. He was approved right away. Stepan was seen, after all, as a serious person, cool-minded, with steady character and patience, who liked to develop questions down to their essence. “The work of our officers has no limit on its hours, and Stepan Vasilyevich
was able to work a day and a night, as much as work required, never capricious, a good fellow officer. Besides,” said Igor, “I knew him well. We lived in the same apartment house and I knew his wife and children, so his domestic side was spoken for.” Stepan would report directly to Igor, who would communicate with the Chief of Counterintelligence in Byelorussia, and that officer, in turn, would report to the head of Moscow Center. It could be said, then, that there were only three steps in this chain of command before it reached the apex in Moscow.
Igor Ivanovich would add that there was a reason for such extreme attention and arch-secrecy concerning Lee Harvey Oswald. Preliminary analysis in Minsk had already suggested opposing hypotheses. There was, for example, Oswald’s service as a Marine to account for. Among people in Counterintelligence, it was taken for granted that CIA and FBI would recruit some of their cadre from Marines. Oswald had also told some of their Moscow sources that he had experience in electronics and radar. Such knowledge was not alien to those serving in intelligence.
Their next variant was that he had a pro-Communist attitude, was Marxist. Yet, closer examination disclosed that he was not proficient in Marxist-Leninist theory. That elicited considerable suspicion.
It was still another matter to make certain that the Americans had not schooled him in Russian and he was concealing his knowledge. That was difficult to determine, but could be examined by observing closely how he proceeded to acquire more language proficiency. So, that would also become a task for any person teaching him Russian. The monitor would have to be able to determine whether Oswald was jumping from lesson to lesson with suspicious progress, or, taking the contrary case, was he experiencing real difficulty? That was certainly a question to clarify.
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery Page 8