Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

The thing that drew me to John Armstrong's thesis was Oswald having taught himself Russian. I NEVER believed that, and I long assumed that the US Military taught him Russian, that perhaps they gave him an aptitude test and figured he had an aptitude for it. 

But then I learned from John Armstrong that Oswald's Marine buddies in Japan all testified that he was really doing radar stuff with them all day. They lived together, and he wasn't doing anything with Russian on his time off either. He never even expressed a desire to learn Russian. 

And where would he have gotten the materials to do it? This was Japan. He might find learning materials to help a Japanese speaker learn Russian, but why should they have materials for an English speaker to learn Russian? 

Could he have ordered materials from the States? If he had done that, there would be a record of it.  

I soon came to realize that the idea of Oswald having learned Russian in Japan is baseless. It is completely lacking in substance. 

Oswald returned to San Francisco by boat on November 19, 1958. He was given a month off and started at Santa Ana on December 22, 1959.  

What did he do for that month? He went home to Texas. He spent time with his brother Robert. They went out shooting together, and Robert took this picture of him.

That is obviously a much bigger man than the Lee Harvey Oswald that we know. And if he was studying Russian during this month, wouldn't Robert have noticed? By the way, this is the last image we have of  "Lee".  There are no pictures of him from El Toro, and he was only there until March. The other Oswald, Harvey, was at Santa Ana until September 11, 1959. 

And when he arrived at Santa Ana in December, he was already speaking Russian. It was just two months later in February that he took and barely passed a Russian proficiency exam in which he got more answers right than wrong. And he wasn't studying Russian all day. He was doing his work as a Marine, and they kept him busy. 

Oswald dated a woman named Rosslyn Quinn who was studying Russian at the Berlitz School, and she was very impressed with Oswald's Russian-speaking ability. 

So, if you think Oswald taught himself Russian, I say WHEN and WHERE and HOW? Be specific. Frankly, I don't think there is a time or place or means by which he could have done it. 

Still, it is possible to put this to the test. We just have to take someone with the same educational background as Oswald, and let's say a high school graduate even though he wasn't that. And, we'll give him the same materials that Oswald was reported to have, which consisted of a Russian dictionary, Russian newspapers, and perhaps Russian books. There is no evidence that Oswald had any course materials in Russian. There is no evidence that Oswald had any instructor. And there is no evidence that Oswald had any audio help. He had Russian music records which he played loudly, to the chagrin of other Marines. But, I consider that to have zero value in learning the language. But, if you want to include them in the mix, fine. 

But, there is no evidence that Oswald had any explicit teaching materials to learn Russian. 

So, we duplicate the materials that Oswald reportedly had, and we duplicate him as best we can, and we assign an arbitrary amount of time to do it. Perhaps 2 months.

How much Russian could be learned that way? I say: close to zero. Without an instructor and without audio guidance, it would be about impossible to make any real progress at all. 

In fact, I doubt the experiment could last two months. The subject would quit within a few days, realizing that it was hopeless.    

But, here is an experiment that everybody can do at will. Although there is no evidence that Oswald possessed a formal course in Russian, and I don't think it is warranted to assume that he did, take a look at this Russian course anyway. On Amazon, you can go through it page by page, and I mean the whole book. Start at the beginning, and really try to get some Russian in your head. When you get to the link below, click on "Look Inside" on the left. 

http://www.amazon.com/New-Penguin-Russian-Course-Beginners/dp/0140120416/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413082866&sr=1-2&keywords=Learn+Russian+Language#reader_0140120416

You've got the whole book there, so if you're willing, spend a full hour really attacking it. Go at it with a vengeance. Then, imagine Lee Harvey Oswald, a dyslexic 9th grade dropout who wrote rather appallingly in English, learning Russian this way. And again, there is no evidence that Oswald ever had a book such as this. According to Mark Osbourne, he did it all with a Russian dictionary and Russian newspapers- which would have been an utterly closed door. 

I ask everyone to stop being naive about this.  Oswald showed up at Santa Ana with an uncanny ability to speak and read Russian. And it is unexplained by anything he did or could have done. John Armstrong's theory that Harvey spoke Russian in his youth is the most plausible explanation for how this came about.