Mrs. Oswald. No.
Mr. Rankin. Did your husband engage in any Communist Party activities while he was in the Soviet Union?
Mrs. Oswald. Not at all—absolutely not.
Mr. Rankin. Do you know whether he was a member of any organization there?
Mrs. Oswald. I think that he was also a member of a trade union, as everybody who works belongs to a trade union. Then he had a card from a hunting club, but he never visited it. He joined the club, apparently.
Mr. Rankin. Did he go hunting while he was there?
Mrs. Oswald. We only went once, with him and with my friends.
Mr. Rankin. Was that when he went hunting for squirrels?
Mrs. Oswald. If he marked it down in his notebook that he went hunting for squirrels, he never did. Generally they wanted to kill a squirrel when we went there, or some sort of a bird, in order to boast about it, but they didn't.
Mr. Rankin. Were there any times while he was in the Soviet Union after your marriage that you didn't know where he went?
Mrs. Oswald. No.
Mr. Rankin. When did you first learn that he was planning to try to go back to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. After we were married, perhaps a month after.
Mr. Rankin. Did you discuss the matter at that time?
Mrs. Oswald. We didn't discuss it—we talked about it—because we didn't make any specific plans.
Mr. Rankin. Do you recall what you said about it then?
Mrs. Oswald. I said, "Well, if we will go, we will go. If we remain, it doesn't make any difference to me. If we go to China, I will also go."
Mr. Rankin. Did you and your husband make a trip to Moscow in connection with your plans to go to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes. We went to the American Embassy.
Mr. Rankin. Did your husband make a trip to Moscow alone before that? About his passport?
Mrs. Oswald. He didn't go alone. He actually left a day early and the following morning I was to come there.
Mr. Rankin. I understood that he didn't get any permission to make this trip to Moscow away from Minsk. Do you know whether that is true?
Mrs. Oswald. I don't know about this. I know that he bought a ticket and he made the flight.
Mr. Rankin. According to the practice, then, would he be permitted to go to Moscow from Minsk without the permission of the authorities?
Mrs. Oswald. I don't know whether he had the right to go to Moscow. Perhaps he did, because he had a letter requesting him to visit the Embassy. But he could not go to another city without permission of the authorities.
Mr. Rankin. When the decision was made to come to the United States, did you discuss that with your family?
Mrs. Oswald. First when we made the decision, we didn't know what would come of it later, what would happen further. And Lee asked me not to talk about it for the time being.
Mr. Rankin. Later, did you discuss it with your family?
Mrs. Oswald. Later when I went to visit the Embassy, my aunt found out about it, because they had telephoned from work, and she was offended because I had not told her about it. They were against our plan.
Mr. Rankin. Did you tell your friends about your plans after you were trying to arrange to go to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes.
Mr. Rankin. Was there some opposition by people in the Soviet Union to your going to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. Somewhat. You can't really call that opposition. There were difficult times.
Mr. Rankin. Can you tell us what you mean by that?
Mrs. Oswald. First, the fact that I was excluded from the Komsomol. This was not a blow for me, but it was, of course, unpleasant. Then all kinds of meetings were arranged and members of the various organizations talked to me. My aunt and uncle would not talk to me for a long time.
Mr. Rankin. And that was all because you were planning to go to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes.
Mr. Rankin. Were you hospitalized and received medical treatment because of all of these things that happened at that time, about your leaving?
Mrs. Oswald. No.
What?
Mr. Rankin. Did you have any nervous disorder in 1961 that you were hospitalized for?
Mrs. Oswald. I was nervous, but I didn't go to the hospital. I am nervous now, too.
Mr. Rankin. Then you went to Kharkov on a vacation, didn't you?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes.
If you have a record of the fact that I was in the hospital, yes, I was. But I was in the hospital only as a precaution because I was pregnant. I have a negative Rh factor, blood Rh factor, and if Lee had a positive they thought—they thought that he had positive—even though he doesn't. It turned out that we both had the same Rh factor.
Mr. Rankin. Did you receive a promotion about this time in the work you were doing?
Mrs. Oswald. No, no one gets promoted. You work for 10 years as an assistant. All the assistants were on the same level. There were no sub-managers, except for the manager who was in charge of the pharmacy.
Mr. Rankin. What I am asking is your becoming an assistant druggist. Was that something different?
Mrs. Oswald. At first I was—I have to call it—an analyst. My job was to check prescriptions that had been prepared. There was no vacancy for an assistant, pharmacy assistant at first. But then I liked the work of a pharmacist's assistant better, and I changed to that.
Mr. Rankin. I will hand you Exhibit 22 and ask you if that is a book that shows that you were promoted or became an assistant druggist.
Mrs. Oswald. The entry here said, "Hired as chemist analyst of the pharmacy."
The next entry says, "Transferred to the job of pharmacy assistant."
These are simply different types of work. But one is not any higher than the other—not because one is a type of management and the other is not. If someone prepared a prescription and I checked it, that was no different from the other work. There is a difference, of course, but not in the sense of a grade of service.
Mr. Rankin. I offer in evidence Exhibit 22.
The Chairman. It may be admitted and take the next number.
(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 22, and received in evidence.)
Mr. Rankin. Mr. Chairman, I ask leave at this time to substitute photostatic copies of any documentary evidence offered, and photographs of any physical evidence, with the understanding that the originals will be held subject to the further order of the Commission.
The Chairman. Very well. That may be done.
Mr. Rankin. Were you aware of your husband's concern about being prosecuted with regard to his returning to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes, he told me about it. He told me about it, that perhaps he might even be arrested.
Mr. Rankin. Was he fearful of prosecution by the Soviet Union or by the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. The United States.
Mr. Rankin. Do you recall any time that the Soviet authorities visited your husband while you were trying to go to the United States?
Mrs. Oswald. No.
Mr. Rankin. What was the occasion