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

We are having a very lively discussion in the OIC about Oswald's Russian-speaking ability, and this very illuminating submission came from Professor James Norwood:

Ralph,

I concur with your assessment of the Russian-language issue.  In a closed-door meeting of the Warren Commission, general counsel J. Lee Rankin did suggest that Oswald might have received language instruction at the famed Monterey School of the Army, stating that “we are trying to find out what [Oswald] studied at the Monterey School of the Army in the way of languages.” 
But the Warren Commission was never able to determine where or when Oswald learned Russian. 

In his biographical memoir entitled Lee—A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald By His Brother, Robert Oswald casually asserted that his brother taught himself Russian.  But there were no substantial gaps in Oswald’s Marine assignments to afford the opportunity for language study, and there is no documentation that Oswald was ever in residence anywhere near Monterey, California.  He lived and worked twenty-four-hours a day alongside Marines, none of whom witnessed Oswald teaching himself Russian or departing from his military routine for the extended periods of time that would imply intensive language training.

Additionally, his fluency was not the kind that would have been achieved in a classroom, even one as sophisticated as the academy at Monterey.  Oswald clearly knew idiomatic Russian, as well as the cultural implications of the Russian language—skills that are typically associated with a native speaker.

When Oswald traveled to the USSR in 1959, he was still only 19 years old.  He had never completed his sophomore year in high school.  There is simply no hard evidence that Oswald ever received specialized language training during his stint in the Marines.

James


P.S.  Jim:  You raise an important point about how much Russian Oswald knew at the time of his defection.  In my study of this topic, he knew Russian like a native speaker.  I'm pasting up below a section of my book that deals with this issue:
"There is abundant evidence pointing to Oswald’s exceptional fluency in Russian.  Mrs. Natalie Ray, a native of Stalingrad, Russia, who 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.” [24]  Mrs. Ray complimented 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.” [25]  When Mrs. Ray was asked by 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.” [26]  George de Mohrenschildt, another native Russian speaker, praised Oswald’s skills in the Russian language, informing the Warren Commission that Oswald “had remarkable fluency in Russian….he preferred to speak Russian than English any time.  He always would switch from English to Russian.” [27]  Peter Gregory, a native of Chita, Siberia, told the Warren Commission that “I thought that Lee Oswald spoke [Russian] with a Polish accent, that is why I asked him if he was of Polish descent….It would be rather unusual…for a person who lived in the Soviet Union for 17 months that he would speak so well that a native Russian would not be sure whether he was born in that country or not.” [28]  Gregory’s son, Peter Paul Gregory, was a graduate student in Russian language and literature at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1960s.  At the time, he conversed with Oswald and later told the Warren Commission that Oswald “was completely fluent.  He understood more than I did and he could express any idea…that he wanted to in Russian.” [29]  Other witnesses, including George Bouhe, Mrs. Teofil (Anna ) Meller, Elena Hall, and Mrs. Dymitruk, vouched for Oswald’s exceptional skills in speaking Russian. [30]"