Serov’s move to the GRU, arriving there in January 1959, was seen as a demotion. The GRU was smaller than the KGB and in many respects subordinate to it. Both organisations were directed by the Central Committee and both of them carried out similar intelligence activities against military, political, economic and scientific targets in foreign countries. Both organisations also perpetrated acts of sabotage, terrorism, provocation and blackmail, and both were engaged in disseminating propaganda. The two main differences were that the GRU concentrated on collecting military intelligence in Western countries, while only the KGB had a mandate to spy on Soviet citizens within the Soviet Union.

As chairman of the KGB, Serov had held ministerial rank, but his new post as chief executive of the GRU made him a deputy chief of the General Staff, a lower status post than that of minister.

In spite of the rivalry between the two organisations, and the discomfiture of his own demotion, Serov was generally well accepted by GRU personnel. He brought with him the reputation of a man who worked hard, was fair to his staff and had considerable clout. He also retained respect, and even continued support, from his former colleagues and friends in the KGB. After his appointment to the GRU there was a noticeable improvement in the turnaround time for answers to enquiries the GRU had addressed to the KGB.

Perhaps surprisingly, Serov did not interfere to any great extent with the normal chain of command. His deputies, Major-General Rogov and Major-General Mamsurov, respectively managed the day-to-day executive work of the organisation, and its general administration. Serov studied the most important intelligence reports that arrived on his desk, made decisions on where to place emphasis and resources, reported to, and received instructions from, the Politburo.

Oleg Penkovsky, the consummate professional intelligence officer, did not give Serov high marks for his ability as an intelligence officer. He described him, in 1961, as: ‘not the most brilliant of men. He knows how to interrogate people, imprison them and shoot them. In more sophisticated intelligence work he is not so skilful.’*

‡

Penkovsky made the most of every day he spent on the advanced rocketry course at the Dzerzhinsky Military Artillery Engineering Academy. He had already decided to work for the West and was determined to bring something valuable from the course. It was mentally taxing, owing not to the high degree of technical detail associated with modern rocketry, but because he recorded all of it by hand, against the day he would start talking to the West.

The course started with the basic concepts of fuel and propulsion of free direction rockets before going on to guidance systems and then the different types of launching equipment.

With his seniority, his position in the GRU (known only to the course administrator) and his intellectual ability, he occupied a privileged position in his class of eighty students. He possessed a certain amount of authority which gave him the opportunity to study books and classified lecture papers from the secure classified library. He also had the opportunity to work independently. In the evenings he would go into the library and block the door by placing a chair-back under the handle while he laboriously copied full details into a notebook. On the rare occasions when anyone rattled the door handle he would quickly put his notebook into his briefcase and explain that he just wanted to study in silence.

Penkovsky graduated from the course, top of his class, on 1 May 1959, but he was not awarded a regimental command. He was assigned to the Fourth Directorate of the GRU, which dealt with Asia. He had already worked in this directorate, from 1953 to 1955, in his first active appointment in the GRU following initial schooling at the Military Diplomatic Academy.

Serov had followed his progress – just as Khrushchev had suggested – and, in the autumn of 1959, he called him in for a discussion about his future.

Serov was now 53. His hairline had been receding for the past twenty years, but his remaining hair was still naturally dark, and his encroaching forehead did not detract significantly from a pleasant, if slightly mousey, face that could express contentment without actually smiling. He did nothing to keep himself fit, yet he looked to be in good shape. This appearance complemented his always impeccable and expensive clothes. He was, by all accounts, a devoted family man. Only his steely grey-blue eyes gave any hint about the dark side of his nature and history.

Looking at him, Penkovsky wondered how this could possibly be the man who bore responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants and other workers; the man who had ordered mass deportations from the Baltic States to Siberia; who was responsible almost single-handedly for enforcing the overthrow of the new Communist Hungarian government in 1956, killing hundreds of its supporters and deporting thousands of sympathetic youths; who still thought the best way to reach a Communist utopia was through the Stalinist methods of fear and suppression, and severely punishing – even with death – those who showed dissent.

Serov congratulated Penkovsky on graduating from the course with distinction. He then moved on to recall how Penkovsky had blotted his copy-book in Ankara. Perhaps he told him that First Secretary Khrushchev saw an amusing side to that incident, but also saw merit in his courage to report it the way he did.

Finally, Serov told Penkovsky that in spite of how things ended in Ankara he had done a good job and, on the basis of that, he was to have a second chance at working overseas. This time he would go to India – to the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi – as military attaché.

Although New Delhi was a far more strategically significant post than Ankara, Penkovsky would not be promoted on taking up duty, but there was a possibility – Serov told him – that he would be considered for promotion after he had been there for a while.

Penkovsky was delighted with this unexpected news of his posting to India, but naturally disappointed with his standstill status. India was important to the Soviet Union. It declared itself to be neutral and therefore a place that the Soviets wished to cultivate. Strategically, it was exceptionally important and they aimed to conduct operations there in due course, perhaps by selling or giving them rocket-borne weapons. Penkovsky’s knowledge of such arms would be an asset.

Pleased as he was about the posting, he nevertheless harboured a vexed conscience about helping the Soviet Union to promote military strategies against the West. It could, he thought, only increase tensions and bring the world ever closer to nuclear annihilation.

He put these thoughts to one side and entered into his training and briefing for the new post with enthusiasm.

Lee Harvey Oswald was determined to make a success of this part of his life. He did not know how many different places he had lived in with his mother, but he was able to count twelve different schools before he left the last one, at the age of seventeen, to join the US Marine Corps. The Corps had accepted him in spite of his lack of educational qualifications and his history of psychiatric treatment.

His time in the Marine Corps had certainly been better than his earlier childhood. There had been no overpowering mother, for a start, and he had enjoyed his studies, finishing in the top half of his class for aircraft surveillance and operating radar. This made him proud of himself for the first time in his life. The highlight was his tour of duty at the Naval Air Facility at Atsugi in Japan, where some CIA U-2 spy planes were based. He also enjoyed the compulsory rifle training, quickly qualifying as a sharpshooter, though this later fell back to marksman level.

But his mental fragility still let him down from time to time. On one occasion he was court-martialled for accidentally shooting himself in the arm with a pistol, and on another for fighting with his sergeant. He spent a short term in prison and was demoted to private.

Joining the Marines had been one strand of his self-rehabilitation; the other had been to espouse Communism. The capitalist society of the United States had not been kind to him. In his early teens he had picked up a book about Communism and readily accepted that that kind of organised socialism would be infinitely preferable. Since then, including his time in the Marines, he had spoken openly about his preference and belief in Communism. He was an avid reader of the Communist Party of the USA’s weekly newspaper The Worker (the Daily Worker prior to 1958).

He considered his prospects after being discharged from the Marine Corps on 11 September 1959. His future in the United States as a dedicated Communist with an insecure and problematic past would be bleak and unbearable. He decided, therefore, that the best course for him would be to live in the Soviet Union. He felt confident they would make a fuss of an American citizen who preferred to live in the Soviet Union; an American citizen who would be used by the propaganda machine to show that even Americans preferred Communism to capitalism. He knew a lot about American military radar and a little about the astonishing U-2 spy planes. The Soviet authorities would want to know about these things.

His initial research showed that it was difficult and time-consuming to apply for and be granted a visa to enter and stay in the Soviet Union. His best course would be to travel to Helsinki in Finland and apply for a five-day Soviet visitor’s visa there. This he did, and it worked well.

Oswald arrived in Moscow on 16 October 1959, just two days before his twentieth birthday. He stayed at the Hotel Berlin. Within minutes of his arrival he told his Intourist guide/interpreter of his intentions and asked where he should go to start the process of applying for Soviet citizenship.† He applied to the Supreme Soviet. Such applications were dealt with by the secretariat of the Politburo and that body immediately passed Oswald’s application to the KGB for consideration. The KGB (in the guise of OVIR, the Visa and Registration Department) called him in for an interview on 20 October. According to Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko – a retired KGB officer, writing thirty-three years after the event – the KGB were not interested in Oswald and suggested to the Politburo secretariat that his application for citizenship should be rejected. The KGB told Oswald as much the next day, adding that he would probably be told to return to the United States.‡

On 21 October, OVIR phoned the Hotel Berlin and left a message for Oswald, asking him to attend a meeting with them at three o’clock that afternoon. At 12 noon, the hotel informed Oswald of the three o’clock meeting and told him that a train ticket to Helsinki had already been ordered for him, so he was clearly being sent back to America. He said he would be down in the vestibule at 2.45 p.m.

When Oswald did not appear, his translator went up to his room and found it locked from the inside. He got the hotel to open the door with a pass key and found Oswald lying unconscious in the bath. He had slashed his wrist, but his attempt at suicide – if, indeed, he had tried to kill himself – was unsuccessful.

Recovering in hospital, Oswald said he would again attempt to commit suicide if his application to stay in the Soviet Union were rejected.

Intourist had a responsibility for the safety of all foreign tourists, and that included Oswald. They were worried about him, not least because they had no idea how to deal with his breakdown, and Soviet psychiatry was more a pseudo-scientific rationale for declaring dissidents schizophrenic than any kind of medicine. Then, on 22 October, the head of Intourist wrote similar letters to the KGB, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Central Committee of the Communist Party asking each of them to accept responsibility for Oswald.

Oswald had made no attempt to contact the American Embassy since his arrival in Moscow, which was unusual to say the least. However, Intourist, or the hospital, or a mysterious American in the same ward as Oswald informed the embassy of his presence in the Soviet Union and the consular section of the embassy contacted him, suggesting that he pay them a visit.

On 28 October, he left hospital and went to stay at the Metropol Hotel. The next day, he had a meeting with the head of OVIR and once again asked to remain in the Soviet Union and become a Soviet citizen. The head of OVIR told him no conclusion had yet been reached and that he could stay in Moscow pending a decision.

On 31 October he went to the American Consulate, determined to burn his bridges with the United States, thereby making it more difficult for the Soviets to expel him. He handed in his passport and said he wished to renounce his United States citizenship. The Consul agreed to take his passport but said he could not accept a formal renunciation of US citizenship until he had proof from the Soviet authorities that he would be granted Soviet citizenship. The Consulate could not, he explained, leave him stateless.

Oswald spent most of the following two weeks in his hotel room, largely to avoid Western reporters who had heard about him from the American Consul. He passed his time by studying Russian.

On 12 November, the head of Intourist, alarmed at the thought of what the Western media might publish about Oswald’s treatment, wrote directly to Anastas Mikoyan, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Mikoyan consulted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB and, between them, they came up with a proposal that they put to the party’s Central Committee. The Central Committee approved the following resolution:

Was this a question of ‘get him out of Moscow and away from the limelight and let’s hope he’ll want to return to the United States’, or was it a solution that would enable the KGB to take a more considered view of Oswald’s potential usefulness and perhaps groom him to work on their behalf?

* See Oleg Penkovsky, ‘Chapter 2’, The Penkovsky Papers (London: Collins, 1965).

† Intourist was the official state travel agency of the Soviet Union, responsible for foreigners’ access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union. The guides and interpreters reported directly to the KGB.

‡ See Oleg Nechiporenko, ‘Chapter 1’, Passport to Assassination (Carol Publishing Group, 1993). Translated from Russian by Todd P. Bludeau.

§ See Oleg Nechiporenko, ‘Chapter 1’, Passport to Assassination (Carol Publishing Group, 1993). Translated from Russian by Todd P. Bludeau.