A veteran of reporting from the Soviet Union and Russia, Peter Savodnik has provided an extensive account of Lee Harvey Oswald's two-and-a-half years in the Soviet Union. He frames Oswald's Soviet years against the backdrop of Nikita Khrushchev's “Thaw,” as Oswald sought to begin, yet again, a new life. The value added of Savodnik's account is his interviews with those who knew Oswald in the critical formative years, from his arrival in Moscow as a naïve nineteen-year-old in October 1959 to his departure with wife and child at the age of 23 in June 1962.
Much of Savodnik's story covers familiar territory: Oswald's reception in Moscow, his suicide attempt, the decision to farm him out to Minsk, his work in the Minsk Radio Factory, his growing circle of friends, his first love and rejection, love and marriage, and the struggle to leave the Soviet Union with wife and child.
Whether...