A journalist with deep ties to Russia charts Lee
Harvey Oswald's sojourn in the Soviet Union - the last
under-explored dimension of the Kennedy assassination.
Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy
in 1963 remains one of the most horrifying and
inexplicable crimes in American history. Just as
perplexing as the assassination is the assassin himself;
Oswald's hazy background and motivations-and his
subsequent murder at the hands of Jack Ruby-make him an
intriguing yet frustratingly enigmatic figure. While it
is known that Oswald lived in the Soviet Union from
October 1959 to June 1962, the conversation surrounding
this period of his life tends to muddy, rather than
illuminate, our understanding of his motives. Historians
have treated Oswald's Soviet period with hungry
speculation, as if the time he spent abroad might hold
the key to unlocking a vast international conspiracy
behind the assassination. As Peter Savodnik shows in The
Interloper, however, the truth is much more
complicated-and wrenching-than these cloak-and-dagger
accounts suggest. Oswald's story is, in many ways, the
story of the era in which he lived. It was a time in
which suspicions and fears were directed inward at one's
neighbors and friends, as well as outward at the
ostensible enemy; a time when the veils of consumption
and political dogmatism only thinly covered peoples'
dissatisfaction and alienation from their fellow
citizens. As Savodnik demonstrates, these issues defined
both the United States and the Soviet Union-and that
frightening parallel was, ultimately, what pushed Oswald
over the brink. The Interloper reframes our
understanding of Oswald, presenting his failed sojourn
as a prism through which to view his subsequent actions.
Savodnik shows that, rather than the work of a
conspiracy or communist plot, the Kennedy assassination
was Oswald's expression of rudderless rage and profound
desperation. It was ultimately a personal, not
political, act-but one that, far from being a tragic
anomaly, was in fact the product of its age. A
revolutionary reassessment of one of America's most
enduring myths, The Interloper provides the first
comprehensive inquiry into the three years Oswald spent
in the Soviet Union, examining - as no previous author
has - the immense influence this time had on Oswald's
beliefs and his motivations. Drawing on groundbreaking
research, including interviews with Oswald's friends and
acquaintances (most of whom have never spoken with
Western journalists), Savodnik has provided us with an
unforgettable work of biography and social history. The
Interloper brilliantly evokes the shattered psyche not
just of Oswald himself, but also of the era he so
tragically defined.
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