There are experts on Soviet affairs who believe that nothing happens in Russia quite by chance and that the authorities were so anxious, or at least willing, to have Oswald leave that they actually encouraged his friendships with Ziger and with Pavel Golovachev in the knowledge that they would counsel him to go. Oswald saw them daily at the factory, and they were also his best personal friends. Ziger is known to have advised him to keep his American citizenship. From everyone he knew, Oswald doubtless heard facts about Soviet life that led him to decide to leave the country sooner than he might otherwise have done. Both may have given him advice on how to return home, on visa tactics, and Ziger and Pavel, in particular, probably told him that if he wanted to leave Russia, and especially if he wanted to take Marina—that was the hard part—he should move while Khrushchev was riding high, since in Russia things could revert at any moment to the way they had been in Stalin’s time. Indeed, as it happened, Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization reached its high point with the Party Congress of October 1962, so that Oswald may once again, just as his and Marina’s exit visas were under consideration, have been the beneficiary of a temporary easing of Soviet policy.
But apart from a brief snippet in Oswald’s diary, there is no evidence, from Marina or from anybody else, that Ziger and Pavel did, in fact, coach Oswald on how to leave the country. Their friendships with him appear to have been genuine and spontaneous, and the two men, one perhaps a father figure, the other an older brother, were very likely the best and the truest friends he ever had.
The Russians could have kept Oswald if they had wanted to, by granting him citizenship, by denying his request for an exit visa, or by simply ignoring his request. He was in their country, a police state. But he was an “unsatisfactory” and uncooperative worker of below-average skill, he was occupying an apartment that would otherwise have gone to a factory official, and until a few months before, he had been receiving a financial subsidy.[9] He was a drain on the country—and he brought no reward. If allowing Marina—who did not fall into any of the proscribed categories—to go was the price of getting rid of Oswald, why not?
On Christmas Day, Monday, December 25, one week to the day after her interview with Colonel Axyonov, Marina was summoned to OVIR. She stopped by on her way home from work and was informed that both she and her husband had been granted exit visas.
— 11 —
Birth of June
Marina and Alik were in splendid spirits when they went to the Zigers’ on New Year’s Eve. They found Mrs. Ziger alone in the kitchen and told her the good news. She kissed them and confessed that she had prayed for this every night. “Maybe, next year,” she added softly, “we will have news, too. Maybe, after all, we shall see one another again.” If life was hard in America, if they suffered disappointments there, go to Argentina, she said. “And if you don’t like it there, go somewhere else. Go anywhere in the world. But never, ever come back here.”
That night the Oswalds told none of the other guests of their good fortune. They were Russians, after all, and it might be an affront to their sensibilities. So they were silent. They ate Spanish rice and Mrs. Ziger’s Polish nut cookies, and Alik danced with no one but Marina. He was in as triumphantly happy a mood as she had ever seen him. He even got a little tipsy.
Pavel Golovachev was the only other friend with whom they shared their good news. He let out a low whistle. “Hm,” he said, “I never thought they’d let Marina out.” To him it meant that things were easing up, and that life might soon be better, not only for those who were allowed to go but for those who were left behind.
Once their visas had been granted, Alik began a flurry of correspondence with the American embassy. The problem now was Marina. The embassy needed several documents to back up her application for an immigrant’s visa to enter the United States, among them an affidavit of support or some other proof that she would not become a public charge. Alik had no job waiting for him, and no proof that he could support a wife. Twice in the first half of January, the embassy suggested to Oswald, who was touchy enough at the best of times and very sensitive on this point, that he precede his wife to the United States.[1] There, he could find a job and obtain the documents he needed. Alik was outraged—“I certainly will not consider going to the US alone for any reason.”[2]
Although this had been his position from the start, the embassy letters gave rise to an angry scene with Marina. She was furious and hurt. She thought the embassy did not want her in the United States and she was not going to be allowed in. She stomped into the kitchen, stood on a chair, plucked her husband’s suitcase off its shelf, and proceeded to pack it for him. “There,” she pointed in fury. “What are you still doing here? There’s your suitcase. There are your things. Take it and go to your America!”
Alik turned the suitcase upside down, dumped the contents on the sofa and the floor, put it back on the shelf in the kitchen, and placed an arm around his wife. “Look,” he said, “I know you don’t love me. But I love you, and I’m not going to leave without you.”
It all ended rather nicely, so both found occasion to repeat the scene. Alik sometimes taunted her: “If it hadn’t been for you, I could have gone to America long ago.” Marina was ready with a reply: “The only reason you’re waiting for me is—you’re afraid they’ll arrest you if you’re alone.”
“No,” he said. “The reason I’m going to wait is, if I go first you’ll never come. Your Aunt Polina and Aunt Valya and Uncle Ilya will keep you here and never let you go. We’ll all go together. And if you don’t get your visa, I’ll stay here.”
“Thanks for being so bighearted,” she said. “But feel free to go any time.”
Marina believes that he had another reason for refusing to go without her. It was a matter of principle with him that he had a right to do anything he pleased. Moreover, he wanted to show the Russians he could get the better of them. He would leave their country and take a Soviet citizen with him. “As if,” she laughs, “the Soviet state would suffer if it had one Marina less.”
The Soviet government, however, had complied with his request. The Oswalds were free to leave Russia. It was the American government that was causing the delay; and besides being unusually frequent—between December 27 and January 23 there are four of them—Oswald’s letters to the American embassy during this period were peremptory and, as always, impatient. On January 23 he added a new reason for his haste: “I would much rather have my child born in the United States, than here, for obvious reasons.”[3] Oswald had troubled, or dared, to tell the embassy only two weeks earlier, on January 5, that he and his wife were expecting a baby. But to the embassy, Oswald’s reasons may not have been “obvious” at all. They might have seemed ludicrously far-fetched. Oswald was expecting a boy, of course. He wanted his son born at home, and not in Russia, so that he could be president of the United States.
9
Report of Minsk Radio Plant Director P. Yudelevich, December 11, 1961 (Exhibit No. 985, Vol. 18, p. 433–434).