He did not tell his mother about his plans. But he quickly disabused her of her hopes that he would live with her. He stayed with her in Fort Worth for two days, then left abruptly for New Orleans, telling her that he was going to get a job on a cargo ship and would send her “big money.” In a letter just before his departure, he wrote to her that “my values are very different from Robert’s or yours. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand.”[11] And on September 20 he was aboard a freighter, the SS Marion Lykes, bound from New Orleans for Le Havre, France.
Lee landed in Le Havre on October 8 and left for England the same day. The following day he flew to Helsinki, applied for and was granted a tourist visa to the Soviet Union, crossed into Russia by train on October 15, and arrived in Moscow on October 16. His visa, good for only six days, would expire on October 20. But the day after his arrival, Lee told his Intourist interpreter, Rimma Shirokova, that he wanted to give up his American citizenship and become a citizen of the USSR. It was October 17, the day before his twentieth birthday.
Rimma reported Lee’s desire to her superiors and helped him draft a letter to the Supreme Soviet requesting citizenship. She was uneasy about the strange fish she had on the hook, but she befriended Lee, continued to guide him around Moscow, and presented him with a copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, perhaps as a warning, on his birthday.
On October 19 Lee was interviewed in his room at the Hotel Berlin by a correspondent for Radio Moscow, Lev Setyayev, who was ostensibly seeking his impressions as a tourist to use in propaganda broadcasts overseas. Whatever Lee may have said—and he felt guilty about it long afterward—his remarks were not used on the air, and part of Setyayev’s job almost certainly was to gather impressions of Oswald for the KGB, the Soviet secret police.
On the morning of October 21, Lee reported for an interview with an official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the MVD. The official was not encouraging. That afternoon Lee was informed that his visa had expired and he had to leave Russia that night. A few hours later Rimma found him locked in his hotel room, bleeding badly. He had slashed his left wrist.
Lee described his suicide attempt in a handwritten account of his experiences in Russia, which he called his “Historic Diary.”[12] In it he wrote that he had soaked his left wrist in cold water to numb the pain, slashed it, then plunged it into a bathtub full of hot water in order to make it bleed more. He knew, however, that Rimma would be coming within the hour. After she found him, he was rushed to the Botkin Hospital, where foreigners are frequently treated, and placed in the psychiatric ward. He had recovered enough by the next day to complain about the poor food and about being in a ward for the insane. A psychiatrist examined him, decided he was not dangerous, and transferred him into a new ward, where he enjoyed a more or less happy, attention-filled week. Rimma came to see him often, and he noted in his diary that she was “preety.”
Lee was released on October 28 and moved from the Hotel Berlin to the Hotel Metropole, two blocks away. That afternoon he was driven to OVIR, the Soviet visa office, and interviewed by a new set of officials, who appeared to know nothing about him or his earlier interview. They asked if he still wanted citizenship, and he said he did. They told him that a decision would be forthcoming, but “not soon.” He was to return to his hotel room and wait.
After three days Lee was wild with impatience. He decided that a “showdown” might convince the Russians of his earnestness, so while Rimma was briefly absent—she was watching him closely—he took a taxi to the American Embassy. There he told a receptionist in the consular office that he wished to “dissolve his citizenship.” She summoned Richard E. Snyder, the US consul, and he took Lee into his office, where his assistant, John A. McVickar, was also present. Lee repeated his desire to renounce his citizenship, affirmed his allegiance to the USSR, and announced that he had applied to become a Soviet citizen. He slapped his passport down on Snyder’s desk and demanded to take the oath renouncing his American citizenship that very moment. And he handed Snyder a letter formally requesting that his American citizenship be revoked and affirming his allegiance to the USSR. He added that he had been a radar technician in the Marine Corps and would make available to the Soviet government such knowledge as he had acquired.
Richard Snyder was in a dilemma, for Lee Oswald appeared to be sane and he was within his rights. But Snyder was newly stung from handling the cases of two would-be defectors, one of whom had quickly changed his mind. If only from a humanitarian point of view, Snyder thought, glancing at Oswald’s passport and noting that he was still a minor, the boy ought to have time to think it over. The step he was proposing was irrevocable, for if he were granted Soviet citizenship, he would never be allowed to leave Russia. Snyder decided to put Oswald off, telling him that he could not administer the oath because it was a Saturday and he needed time to prepare the papers. But Oswald was free to appear two days later, on Monday, he said, and take the oath then if he chose. Snyder suggested, however, that Oswald wait until he was assured of Soviet citizenship, or he would have no citizenship at all. Lee stalked out, leaving his passport and his letter behind.
The exchange lasted less than an hour, but it had so nasty a tone that it was remembered long afterward by three Americans, besides Snyder and Oswald, who were present during parts of it—John McVickar, the vice-consul; Marie Cheatham, the receptionist; and Edward L. Keenan, a graduate exchange student down for the weekend from Leningrad.
Lee returned to his hotel greatly pleased with himself and confident the Russians would accept him after his bravura display of good faith. That day and the next he was besieged by members of the American press corps in Moscow, who had been told by the embassy about his attempt to defect. Lee confided to his diary that the attention made him feel “exhilarated and not so lonely.” But fearful lest he prejudice his case, he turned every one of them away. He repeatedly refused long-distance telephone calls from his mother and his brothers and spent two weeks in “utter loneliness.”
On November 3, Lee wrote Llewellyn Thompson, the American ambassador in Moscow, again asking that his citizenship be revoked and complaining about his treatment by Snyder. Snyder replied by mail that he had only to appear at the embassy to renounce his citizenship. But Lee did not stir from his hotel. On November 8 he wrote to his brother Robert: “I will never return to the United States, which is a country I hate.”[13]
On November 13 Lee telephoned Aline Mosby, a reporter for United Press International; she came to see him, and he talked to her “non-stop” for two hours. And on November 16 a Soviet official came to his room and informed him that he could remain until a decision had been made as to what to do with him. It was virtually a promise that he could stay, and Lee was vastly relieved.
I happened to be the beneficiary of his relief. I was a newspaper and magazine reporter in Moscow in 1959. 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.”