Interloper

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 [...]
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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.