Oswald in Minsk

[Jan Klimkowski]

There were several reasons people were unable to travel in the former USSR. But most people are unaware of what these may have been as they see all things Soviet through a western propaganda lens. One reason people might be denied travel permission is that they have not yet done their required time in their occupation for which they have been trained. Marina had done her time as a pharmacist and there would be no reason to stop her on this basis alone. Another reason people would not travel to the west is because the west did not accept Soviet Roubles and it was hugely difficult to exchange for foreign currency so most didn't and took holidays in the Eastern Block and Cuba where they didn't have this problem. As Marina was going to be a dependant of Oswald this did not matter in her case. The USSR government could have for some reason forbidden Marina to travel to the US but she was really for all appearances a nobody. She had no special position or responsibilities. At this stage of her life she was a mother and out of the work force. She held no particular skills that could not be done by some one else with similar training. She held no great state secrets. Having Marina move to another country was not going to be a huge loss for the USSR or compromise them in any way and they get rid of the awkward and suspicious Oswald too. But in her leaving she may have been of use to the Soviet authorities in giving information back to them. Wittingly or unwittingly.

Although there is still that intruging Webster connection with her.....

Magda - you make some good points but, with respect, I would have expected the USSR to have been far tougher on the criteria.

My father was Polish and my mother is English, and the family were living near London in the 1960s. Around 1967, my dad's cousin, who was born and lived in communist Poland, was in her early twenties, was married with a five-year-old son, and had just been through Polish medical school to train as an anaesthetist. She decided to try to travel to England. The Polish communist authorities refused to allow her to travel with her son and husband, and my mother, as the English citizen, had to invite and "sponsor" her visit, guaranteeing that would have a place to live and would not be a financial drain on the state. The Polish authorities were so concerned at losing their investment in a newly trained doctor that they effectively kept her son hostage in Poland as a guarantor of her return.

As it turned out, my cousin decided to divorce her husband and marry a British citizen within weeks of arriving in England, and thus officially "defected". She retrained as a doctor in the British NHS, and her son was finally allowed out of Poland when he was eleven, six years later

My parents tell me that our house phone was clearly bugged, by some clunky sixties technology, and they suffered considerable difficulty whenever they tried to visit Poland in subsequent years.

In short, I am suspicious of the ease with which Marina was allowed to leave the USSR.

I am even more suspicious of the lack of officially disclosed debriefing of LHO and Marina, and the lack of official monitoring of this couple, after their arrival in the USA.

In my judgement, the official story is entirely without credibilty.

Recent revelations about the number of secret files on Oswald are far more credible than the official story.

The involvement of the emigre White Russain community in l'affair Oswald strongly suggests that LHO was being played. By more than one party.