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

I came across another pertinent fact in this biography of Natalie Wood that I'm reading. After her first marriage to Robert Wagner ended, she took up with Warren Beatty who was her co-star in Splendor in the Grass. The rumor was that they had gotten romantically involved during the making of Splendor, but that was not true. They actually didn't like each other during the making of Splendor, and it was a problem. And, Beatty had nothing to do with her break-up with Wagner. 

But unexpectedly, they connected after her split from Wagner, and in the summer of 1962, she and Beatty traveled to Europe together, and they wound up at the Cannes Film Festival. And there, she charmed the Russian delegation by performing Russian folk dances and "speaking to them in their native tongue."

She was 24 years old at the time, and I have the distinct impression from reading the book that she hadn't spoken much Russian in quite some years. There was no call for it. But, she still remembered it from her childhood, being the daughter of Russian immigrants. 

And, it was the same way for Lee Harvey Oswald, that is, the LHO of fame. He learned Russian as a child in his formative years. And like Natalie, he must have reached the point where he was hardly speaking it at all. Nobody in the Marines reported Oswald speaking Russian prior to Santa Ana. But, when it was time to turn on the Russian-speaking charm, he could still do it, just as she could still do it. 

This is not only the most sensible and logical scenario for how Oswald learned to speak Russian- it is the only one that makes any sense at all. He did not teach himself to speak Russian. That is just a flight of fancy.