Oswald in Minsk

[Magda Hassan]

The life of Oswald in the USSR is surrounded by a cloud of mystery. I'll try to raise some questions:
1. Why he was sent in Minsk Belarusia, miles away from Russia?
2. Why he was sent to work in an electronics factory and not in a milk or clothing factory?
3. Why his supervisor at the factory was one Alexander Romanovich Ziger with possible CIA connections?
4. How come and Marina Prusakova an educated woman,who had an uncle in the interior ministry security service
fell immediately in love with Oswald?
5. Why Marina, a niece of a security officer was allowed to marry an American defecor?
6. Why the Soviet authorities gave her a visa to travel to USA with an American defector
when her uncle could have stopped the visa?
I can only think that all the above mysteries were part of an elaborate spy game involving illegals and false defectors
and it is probably an indication of what Charles Drago calls Supra-national cooperation between factions of CIA and KGB.
Any suggestions?

There are most certainly large questions that surround Marina, especially her identification of Webster and his details being in her address book. But I don't find it suspicious that she was allowed to marry or travel to the US with her husband. I think it is often misunderstood how things worked in the USSR and the Eastern Block nations and how accepting of human relationships as such they could be and about the travel restrictions too. People could travel if they were in good standing with the government, and most were, and did not owe any money for university etc. It was a requirement of all citizens that they work for a number of years or months, depending on skills and qualification etc., and do national service if male before they could leave their job and the country. Since she had already been in employment and was already a mother (mothers had paid leave for a number of years) she had likely already done her dues and could travel. Nor was she is in any high risk occupation like being a nuclear phyisist which may have had resitrictions on western travel. Since the US and west in general did not recognise the Soviet rouble as an exchangable currency it was very difficult to get the money to travel for average people anyway. Since Oswald would be assuming responsibility for her and their child this was not an issue in this case. What is most interesting to me is how the US gave her permission to enter the country with Oswald the traitorous defector.....

I don't doubt for a second that Oswald was not trusted as a genuine defector by the Soviets and I don't doubt that they may have used Marina, even unwittingly, to collect information on him where ever he was.

Perhaps he was sent to Minsk as it was smaller and therefore easier to keep an eye on him and for him to keep out of trouble. If my memory serves me Minsk had quite a good security coverage, training academies etc too especially for a city of only 500,000 or so in those days.

It may have been as simple as the position in the radio factory was the first one available or that there were persons there would could monitor him (Zigler?). I expect he would have been monitored at a textile factory or milk bottling factory too.

Maybe Marina had a thing for exotic foreigners. Some women do where ever they are. Maybe she was pushed towards him for purposes other than romance.