JFK Assassination Forum

It occurred to me: Why did Rimma Shirakova say that Oswald's Russian was so rudimentary that they communicated in English? Why did Ernst Titovets, his closest friend, say that he spoke Russian poorly? Why did no one at the hospital to which he was taken after his dubious suicide attempt report that he was able to communicate in surprisingly good Russian? Why did his would-be fiance, Ella German, describe his communication in Russian as "functional" but his grammar as "horrific"? Why did none of his many, many coworkers and acquaintances who were interviewed by people like Norman Mailer and Peter Vronsky report that his Russian was surprisingly good? Makes no sense. Oh, wait, it does at the Harvey & Lee site: Harvey (or Lee, as the case may be) carefully disguised that he was absolutely fluent and, indeed, a native Russian speaker! Up is down, black is white, Lee Harvey Oswald was actually a native Russian speaker.

Perhaps you folks have seen this, but I hadn't. It is a translation provided to the ARRB of a series of pieces that appeared in Izvestia, one of the two primary Russian newspapers, in August of 1992. It's quite a straightforward piece of reporting about the Belarusian KGB files on Oswald and the intense, 24-hour-a-day surveillance of him: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10336-10032.pdf. It's surprisingly candid (it seems to me) about the secrecy surrounding the Soviet KGB files and claimed lack of interest in Oswald. The Resident Crazy Person will, of course, claim that it's just a KGB fluff piece, but you can judge that for yourself.

What I found interesting is that the article refers to Oswald's poor Russian language skills in several places. In one, an upstairs neighbor had accidentally left the water running, and it trickled down to Oswald's apartment. He came screaming upstairs to complain, but his Russian skills were so poor that it was difficult to understand him. As time went by, his Russian got "better." This kind of thing is far more telling than anything to which those claiming he had proficiency in Russian can point. A CTer is almost forced to H&L "logic," where his lack of proficiency is actually proof of his fluency.

Royell, you have a propensity to keep telling us to "stay tuned" because monster revelations are coming from "backstage," but then you reply to a post from Dan O'Meara dated March 13, 2024. Get on with it, willya? Put up or shut up. These long threads become absolutely incomprehensible to anyone but you. Your next post absolutely must begin: "This is it, folks. No more 'stay tuned' promises. No more mysterious 'backstage' shenanigans. This is the Big Revelation."

I hope your latest response to Dan's 2024 post wasn't it, because "roughly" is not a term typically found in argument where one is claiming a physical event is "impossible."

Additional Russian language trivia:

1. EVERY letter is pronounced. There is no mystery. You can make a good stab at pronouncing a Russian word even if you have no idea what it means, or writing a Russian word you can speak as long as you simply know the alphabet.

2. Many Russian words are simply bastardizations of their English equivalents. The old term for camera is "apparat" (i.e., apparatus). A car is a "machina." Gasoline is "benzina." I remember diligently learning the Pimsleur phrase "I want to play chess" - "Ya haichoo egrat shockmatey." It was long after I learned it that it dawned on me that the mysterious "shockmatey" was simply "checkmate."

3. I have observed, and my wife has strongly reinforced, that Russians from that era were and are WAY more reticent than Americans about engaging in small talk or revealing personal information (because that was a dangerous thing to do). My wife is still aghast at the level of personal information that I and some Walmart cashier will exchange in the course of a checkout. My guess is that what we picture as clever banter at the dance with Marina looked and sounded nothing like an American college party of that era.