How was Oswald proficient in Russian before defecting to the Soviet Union
Numerous eyewitnesses provide us with a profile of Oswald?s fluency in Russian, suggesting that he was a native speaker. According to these first-hand accounts, Oswald?s conversational and idiomatic Russian were so flawless that he could not have reached this level of fluency exclusively from the two-and-a-half years he spent in the USSR. Mrs. Natalie Ray, who emigrated to the United States from Stalingrad and met Oswald after his return from the Soviet Union, testified to the Warren Commission that his conversational Russian was ?just perfect?.it?s just too good speaking Russian for such a short time.? [4] Mrs. Ray was paying a posthumous compliment to Oswald while speaking in her own broken English: ?I said, ?How come you speak so good Russian? I been here so long and still don?t speak very well English.?? [5] When Mrs. Ray was asked by Warren Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler, ?You thought he spoke Russian better than you would expect a person to be able to speak Russian after only living?there only 3 years??, she replied, ?Yes; I really did.? [6]
After testing Oswald?s skills in translation, linguist Peter Gregory, who was a native Russian, dashed off a letter of recommendation for Oswald for work as a professional interpreter or translator of the Russian language. But with no evidence of formal training other than spending two-and-half years in the Soviet Union, how was it possible for Oswald to attain this level of accomplishment? Moreover, Gregory believed that Oswald spoke Russian with a Polish accent, which could not have been acquired from living in Minsk.
Peter Gregory?s son, Paul, was a schoolmate of Oswald?s at Stripling Junior High School in Fort Worth in the academic year 1954-55. The school records documenting Oswald?s enrollment, which were hand-delivered to FBI agents by assistant principal Frank Kudlaty, were subsequently lost by the FBI. By the early 1960s, Paul Gregory was a graduate student in Russian language and literature at the University of Oklahoma. He later told the Warren Commission that, despite making grammatical errors, Oswald ?was completely fluent. He understood more than I did and he could express any idea?that he wanted to in Russian.? [9] Other witnesses, including George Bouhe, Mrs. Teofil (Anna ) Meller, Elena Hall, and Mrs. Dymitruk, recalled Oswald?s exceptional skills in speaking Russian. [10] This substantial body of testimony vouching for Oswald?s Russian language skills is not casual ?hearsay? evidence, but often first-hand accounts recorded under oath for the Warren Commission.
George De Mohrenschildt was a Russian ?migr? who had taught Russian language at the university level. He was in a perfect position to assess Oswald?s command of the language, yet was puzzled about where, how, and when Oswald could have achieved such mastery. How was it possible for an American high school dropout in his early twenties to have read ?Gorki, Dostoevski, Golgol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff? in the original Russian language versions? The extract above is from p. 118 of De Mohrenschildt?s memoir I Am a Patsy!: My Contact With Lee Harvey Oswald, The Warren Commission, and the JFK Assassination Conspiracy.
