This was also in a History Channel documentary. It does not sound as if Oswald actually did defect and if he did he never renounced his citizenship. I am not sure of the difference. The documentary stated that there were others who had done the same as Oswald. There is also no link found connecting Oswald to the CIA, or anyone else for that matter. He was a lone pitiful nut case which doesn't fit the crime but facts be the facts.
Defection to the Soviet Union[edit]
Lee Harvey Oswald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In October 1959, just before turning 20, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, a trip he planned well in advance. Along with his self-taught Russian, he had saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary.[n 3] Oswald spent two days with his mother in Fort Worth, then embarked by ship from New Orleans on September 20 to Le Havre, France, and immediately proceeded to the United Kingdom. Arriving in Southampton on October 9, he told officials he had $700 and planned to remain in the United Kingdom for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. However, on the same day, he flew to Helsinki, where he was issued a Soviet visa on October 14. Oswald left Helsinki by train on the following day, crossed the Soviet border at Vainikkala, and arrived in Moscow on October 16.[48] His visa, valid only for a week, was due to expire on October 21.[49]
Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald told his Intourist guide of his desire to become a Soviet citizen. When asked why by the various Soviet officials he encountered—all of whom, by Oswald's account, found his wish incomprehensible—he said that he was a communist, and gave what he described in his diary as "vauge [sic] answers about 'Great Soviet Union'".[49] On October 21, the day his visa was due to expire, he was told that his citizenship application had been refused, and that he had to leave the Soviet Union that evening. Distraught, Oswald inflicted a minor but bloody wound to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub soon before his Intourist guide was due to arrive to escort him from the country, according to his diary because he wished to kill himself in a way that would shock her.[49] Delaying Oswald's departure because of his self-inflicted injury, the Soviets kept him in a Moscow hospital under psychiatric observation until October 28, 1959.[50]
Apartment building where Oswald lived in Minsk
According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that same day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States; he insisted to them that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. When pressed for identification papers, he provided his Marine Corps discharge papers.[51]
On October 31, Oswald appeared at the United States embassy in Moscow, declaring a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship.[52][53] "I have made up my mind," he said; "I'm through."[54] He told the U.S. embassy interviewing officer, Richard Edward Snyder, that " he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest."[55] (Such statements led to Oswald's hardship/honorable military reserve discharge being changed to undesirable.)[56] The Associated Press story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some newspapers in 1959.[54]
Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow State University, he was sent to Minsk to work as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which produced radios, televisions, and military and space electronics. Stanislau Shushkevich, who later became independent Belarus's first head of state, was also engaged by Gorizont at the time, and was assigned to teach Oswald Russian.[57] Oswald received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay—all in all, an idyllic existence by working-class Soviet standards,[58] though he was kept under constant surveillance.[59]
Oswald grew bored in Minsk.[60] He wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough."[61] Shortly afterwards, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship) wrote to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow requesting return of his American passport, and proposing to return to the U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.[62]
In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married less than six weeks later in April.[n 4][63] The Oswalds' first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962. On May 24, 1962, Oswald and Marina applied at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for documents enabling her to immigrate to the U.S. and, on June 1, the U.S. Embassy gave Oswald a repatriation loan of $435.71.[64] Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States, where they received no attention from the press, much to Oswald's disappointment.[65]