Oswald's Tale (98 page)

APPENDIX

Worth quoting here are a few passages from Dr. Howard P. Rome of the Mayo Clinic, whose report on dyslexia is buried in Volume XXVI of the Warren Commission papers, Exhibit No. 3134, pp. 812–817.

I think that this disability and its consequential effect upon him, while a minor point in the total array of evidence accumulated by the Commission, is relevant since it amplifies the impression from many sources about the nature of Oswald’s estrangement from people, his diffident truculence during school years and his unwarranted estimation of his literary capacities.

Such traits as these are not uncommon sequelae of a life-experience which has been marked by repeated thwarting in almost every sphere of endeavor. For a bright person to be handicapped in the use of language is an especially galling experience. It seems to me that in Oswald’s instance this frustration gave an added impetus to his need to prove to the world that he was an unrecognized “great man.”

. . . handicapped by an inability to read and spell at a level of efficiency which could otherwise be attended by rewards, a person with this handicap is at a great premium to maintain sustained attention and interest in activity where he is a consistent poor performer.

The high social value placed upon adequate literate performance by our culture invokes sanctions of considerable significance upon these persons. Inasmuch as they tend to lose status in the eyes of their peers as well as superiors (teachers, parents, and adults), they are prone to develop a range of alternative ways of coping with their disadvantaged state: apparent indifference, truculent resistance, and other displacement activities by which they hope to cover up their deficiency and appear in a more commendable light . . . .

There are many examples of his typical efforts at a crude approximation of proper spelling: “enorgies” for “energies,” “compulusory” for “compulsory,” “patrioct” for “patriotic,” “opions” for “opinions,” “esspicialy” for “especially,” “disire” for “desire,” “unsuraen” for “insurance,” “indepence” for “independence,” “negleck” for “neglect,” “immeanly” for “immediately,” “abanded” for “abandoned,” “nuclus” for “nucleus,” “triditionall” for “traditional,” “imperilistic” for “imperialistic,” “alturnative” for “alternative,” “traiditions” for “traditions,” “neccary” for “necessary,” “trations” for “traditions,” “prefered” for “preferred,” . . . [and the list continues for another page].

Very few people have patience to read a writer who spells badly, but since I was obliged to go over Oswald’s writings for this book, I was able to discover that our protagonist, cleansed of the grime of his misspellings and poor punctuation, was not only an intelligent man but had, doubtless, shielded himself from how his errors would affect others. So I thought that to understand Oswald’s personal drama—that is to say, how he thought he was impressing himself on others—we ought to be able to read his thought at the level at which he thought he was presenting it. Ergo, what you have seen in this book is not the precise letter he composed but a more finished product. An editor and copy-editor (your author and his assistant) did the weeding. Those who wish to see what any particular letter or page of original manuscript was like need only refer to this book’s citations from the twenty-six volumes of the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits.

It is worth repeating the point more than once: To show Oswald constantly in the toils of his dyslexia is to do no more than repeat society’s low estimate of him, whereas to correct his spelling and punctuation brings us closer to his psychological reality—which is that he would yet be most important in the scheme of things. Be it said that if he had not distinguished himself verbally in the two radio debates with Stuckey, one would not have been nearly so inclined to dress up his literary appearance; but it was obvious from reading Stuckey’s transcripts that Oswald had polemical gifts large enough to encourage a closer look at what he was saying.

To give readers an idea of the extent of the changes, a half page of some of the worst of his original text from his essay on Minsk will now be placed next to the copy-edited version.

Example of Oswald’s uncorrected writing:

It may be explained that in the Eastern European custom all citizens upon reaching the age of 16 years are given a grey-green “passport” or identifecation papers. On the first page is a foto and personal information, on the following 4 pages, are places for registring address, this including rented rooms, on the next four pages are places for paticular remarks as to the conduct of the carier, a place better kept blank, the next three pages are for registering the places of work, then the next page is for marriage license and divorce stamps, these passprts are changed for a small chrage every five years, a lost passport can be replaced after a short investagation for 10 rubles, all persons regardless of nationality are required to carry these at all times in the Soviet Union nationalities are allso marked on the passport, for instance, a Urakranion is marked Urakrinuien, a Jew is marked Jew, no matter where he was born . . .

Oswald’s writing as corrected:

It may be explained that in the Eastern European custom, all citizens upon reaching the age of 16 years are given a gray-green “passport” or identification papers. On the first page is a photo and personal information. On the following four pages are spaces for registering addresses, this including rented rooms. On the next four pages are places for particular remarks as to the conduct of the carrier—a place better kept blank. The next three pages are for registering the places of work; then the next page is for marriage licenses and divorce stamps. These passports are changed for a small charge every five years. A lost passport can be replaced after a short investigation for 10 rubles. All persons regardless of nationality are required to carry these at all times. In the Soviet Union, nationalities are also marked on passports. For instance, a Ukrainian is marked Ukrainian; a Jew is marked “Jew” no matter where he was born . . .

The excerpts that follow are corrected, and make up about half of those fifty-odd pages of Oswald’s manuscript upon which George De Mohrenschildt offered his comments to the Warren Commission:

FROM THE COMMISSION EXHIBITS

VOL. XVI, PP.
287–336

The Minsk Radio and Television Plant is known throughout the Union as the major producer of electronic parts and sets. In this vast enterprise created in the early ’50s, the Party Secretary is a 6′ 4″ man in his early forties [who] has a long history of service to the Party. He controls the activities of the 1,000 Communist Party members here and otherwise supervises the activities of the other 5,000 people employed at this major enterprise in Minsk, the capital of the third-ranking Republic, Byelorussia.

This factory manufactures 87,000 large and powerful radios and 60,000 television sets in various sizes and ranges, excluding pocket radios, which are not mass-produced anywhere in the USSR. It is this plant which manufactured several console model combination radio-phonograph-television sets which were shown as mass-produced items of commerce before several hundreds of thousands of Americans at the Soviet Exposition in New York in 1959. After the Exhibition, these sets were duly shipped back to Minsk and are now stored in a special storage room on the first floor of the Administrative Building—at this factory, ready for the next International Exhibit.

I worked for 23
^*
months at this plant, a fine example of average and even slightly better than average working conditions. The plant covers an area of 25 acres in a district one block north of the main thoroughfare and only two miles from the center of the City with all facilities for the mass production of radios and televisions. It employs 5,000 full-time and 300 part-time workers, 58% women and girls.

Five hundred people during the day shift are employed on the huge stamp and pressing machines where sheet metal is turned into metal frames and cabinets for television sets and radios.

Another five hundred people are employed in an adjoining building for the cutting and finishing of rough wood into fine polished cabinets. A laborer’s process, mostly done by hand, the cutting, trimming and the processes right up to hand-polishing are carried out here at the same plant. The plant also has its own stamp-making plant, employing 150 people at or assisting at 80 heavy machine lathes and grinders. The noise in this shop is almost deafening as metal grinds against metal and steel saws cut through iron ingots at the rate of an inch a minute. The floor is covered with oil used to drain the heat of [the] metal being worked so one has to watch one’s footing; here the workers’ hands are as black as the floor and seem to be [so] eternally . . .

The plant has its electric shop where those who have finished long courses in electronics work over generators, television tubes, and testing experiments of all kinds. The green worktables are filled high here. Electric gadgets are not too reliable, mostly due to the poor quality of the wires, which keep burning out under the impact of the usual 220V voltage . . .

The plastics department is next. Here forty-seven women and three physically disabled persons keep the red-hot liquid plastic flowing into a store of odd presses, turning out their quotas of knobs, handles, non-conducting tube bases, and so forth. These workers suffer the worst conditions of work in the plant (an otherwise model factory for the Soviet Union) due to bad fumes and the hotness of the materials. These workers are awarded 30 days vacation a year, the maximum for workers. Automation is now employed at a fairly large number of factories, espcially in the war industry. However, for civilian use, their number is still small . . .

Factory meetings of the Kollectives are so numerous as to be staggering.

For instance, during one month, the following meetings and lectures are scheduled: 1 Professional Union, which discusses the work of the Professional Union in gathering dues, paying out receipts on vacation orders, etc.; 4 political information every Tuesday on the lunch hour; 2 Young Communist
^*
meetings on the 6th and 21st of every month; 1 Production Committee made up of workers discussing ways of improving work; 2 Communist Party meetings a month called by the section Communist Party Secretary; 4 School of Communist Labor meetings, compulsory, every Wednesday; 1 sports meeting per month, noncompulsory—for a total of 15 meetings every month, 14 of which are compulsory for Communist Party members and 12 compulsory for all others. These meetings are always held after work or on the lunch hour. They are never held during working time. Absenteeism is by no means allowed. After long years of hard discipline, especially under the Stalin regime, no worker will invite the sure disciplinary action of the Party men, and inevitably the factory Party Committee, because of trying to slip out of the way or giving too little attention to what is being said.

A strange sight indeed is the picture of the local Party man delivering a political sermon to a group of usually robust, simple working men who through some strange process have been turned to stone. Turned to stone—all except the hard-faced Communists with roving eyes looking for any bonus-making catch of inattentiveness on the part of any worker. A sad sight for someone not used to it, but the Russians are philosophical. Who likes the lecture? “Nobody—but it’s compulsory.” . . .

For a good cross-section of the Russian working class, I suggest we examine the lives of some of the 58 workers and 5 foremen working in the experimental shop of the Minsk radio plant . . .

The shop itself is located in a two-story building with no particular noticeable mark on its red brick face. By 8:00
A.M.
sharp all the workers have arrived and at the sound of a bell sounded by the duty orderly, who is a worker whose duty it is to see the workers don’t slip out for too many smokes, they file upstairs, except for 10 turners and lathe operators whose machines are located on the first floor. Work here is given out in the form of blueprints and drawings by the foreman Zonof and junior foreman Lavruk to workers whose various reliability and skills call for them, since each worker has with time acquired differing skills and knowledge. Work is given strictly according to so-called “pay levels,” the levels being numbered 1 through 5 with the highest level [6, called] “master.” For level 1, a worker receives approximately 68 rubles for work; level 2, a worker receives 79.50; level 3, 90 rubles; level 4, 105 rubles; for level 5, 125 rubles; and for “masters,” about 150 . . . Except in instances of poor quality work, bonuses are always the same, giving rise to a more or less definite pay scale. A worker may demand to be tested for a higher pay level at any time [and] higher bonuses are awarded to the best shops by the factory committee for good production standards.

Our shop head Stephen Tarasavich is a stout, open-faced, well-skilled metal-worker who, although he hasn’t got a higher education (which is now a prime requisite for even a foreman’s job) managed to finish a four-year specialty night school course . . . Stephen has an almost bald head except for a line of hair on the left side which he is forever combing across his shiny top. Aged 45, he is married, with two children aged 8 and 10. It may be explained that Russians seem to marry much older than their American counterparts. Perhaps that can be explained by the fact that in order to receive an apartment people often must wait for 5 or 6 years and since security is so unstable until a commonly desired goal is reached—that is, an apartment for oneself—most Russians do not choose to start families until later in life. Stephen is responsible to the Factory Committee and Director for the filling of quotas and production quality. His foreman Zonof is 38 years old, has a wife and 15-month-old baby. Not too long ago, [he] moved out of his one-room flat without kitchen or private toilet into a newly built apartment house and flat of two small rooms, kitchen and bath, a luxury not experienced by most Russians. A tall, thin man with dark creases in his face, his manner, nervous, spontaneous, and direct, betrays his calling. His job: keep the work on the premises going as quickly and efficiently as possible. His assistant, junior foreman Lavruk, is much younger, ten years younger, enigmatic, handsome, quick. He climbed to his post through a night school degree and a sort of rough charm which he instinctively uses in the presence of superiors. The shop’s mainstay is composed of 17 “Shock Workers” whose pictures hang on a wall near the stairs so that all might strive to imitate them. Usually of the 5 level or “master” class of workers, they are experienced at work and politics.