Language Lessons In Minsk

With Belarus so much in the news lately why not have a look at this?

So much has been written about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Here is something that really deserves a lot more attention, not about the assassination itself but a related story.

In the compound posting "Investigations", December 2018, we saw section 52) THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY MADE REALLY SIMPLE.

Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin, had earlier defected to the Soviet Union. He spent about two and a half years living in the city of Minsk, in what was then the Soviet Republic of Byelorussia (or Belorussia). It was sometimes referred to as "White Russia". In 1962 Oswald returned to the U.S. with his Belarusian wife, Marina.

After returning to the U.S. Oswald lived in his native New Orleans, and then Dallas, where he assassinated Kennedy.

Oswald had planned to defect to the Soviet Union when his service in the U.S. Marines was finished. He traveled to LeHavre, then London, then Helsinki where he got a tourist visa to Moscow, where he finally convinced the authorities to let him stay.

The defectors that were allowed to stay in the Soviet Union were never allowed to live in Moscow. Lest they just might be some kind of agents, they were always assigned to live in remote cities that were far from the Soviet centers of power. Lee Harvey Oswald was assigned to the Belarusian city of Minsk, which he didn't seem to have ever heard of before.

Oswald found a pleasant and fairly prosperous city in Minsk where he was assigned an apartment and a job in the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which made radios. He had been a radar operator in the U.S. Marines, at the base in Japan from where the high-altitude U2 planes were launched on spy missions.

As might be expected, the KGB watched everything that Oswald did in Minsk closely. They seem to have decided that he was not very intelligent or well-educated, as well as being lazy and less-than-competent at work. Oswald did not seem to be the type of person that America would send on a sensitive mission. 

Oswald didn't seem to grasp, or to be greatly interested in, the details of Communist ideology, as he had professed upon his arrival in the Soviet Union. What had promoted his move was clearly more personal than ideological.

He eventually decided to return to the U.S., he had turned in his passport at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow but had never formally renounced his citizenship. He had been asked if he wanted Soviet citizenship, after living for a time in Minsk, but had declined. 

His decision to return to the U.S. also seems to have been personal, although he described it in his diary in ideological terms. A girl in Minsk, Ella German, had declined his proposal of marriage. He had married another girl, Marina, but maybe not the one he really wanted.  But there is other opinions online that it was Oswald's new wife who had really wanted to leave.

While Oswald was working at the Gorizont Electronics Factory in Minsk an engineer at the factory was assigned to give him lessons in improving speaking Russian. The engineer's name was Stanislav Shushkevich, and that is where our amazing story begins.

We know that Lee Harvey Oswald, after his return to the U.S., would shake America and the world by assassinating John F. Kennedy. By all accounts that I have seen the people who had known and worked with him in Minsk were shocked. Many were in disbelief, with the opinion that Kennedy had been killed by his political enemies and Oswald framed for it because he had lived in the Soviet Union.

What I want to add is that Stanislav Shushkevich, a few years older than Oswald and assigned by the Gorizont Factory to help him improve speaking Russian, would also shake the world. Although he would not use the same method as his former student.

There was nothing apparently special about these two young men, both in their twenties, in a factory in Minsk, one assigned to help the other with his language skills. Oswald went down in history because he would later decide to return to the U.S., where he would assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

Stanislav Shushkevich would make history too. It couldn't have been apparent when he was helping Lee Harvey Oswald to improve speaking Russian but Shushkevich would go on to a political career. He would actually be the first leader of Belorussia, after the Soviet Union broke up at the end of 1991. The newly-independent nation was renamed as "Belarus".

Shushkevich had been the chairman of the Soviet Republic of Belorussia before the breakup and he hosted the meeting that resulted in the end of the Soviet Union. 

Shushkevich met with his counterparts Boris Yeltsin, of Russia, and Leonid Kravchuk, of Ukraine. The momentous decision was made that continuing the Soviet Union served no purpose. The three Baltic Soviet Republics, Lithuania, Latvia and, Estonia, had already seceded. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, was still trying to hold the union together, albeit with reforms. This meant there was no place for Gorbachev in the new post-Soviet order. He was not present at the meeting in Belorussia. Stanislav Shushkevich, the host of the meeting, called Gorbachev to tell him that the Soviet Union, and thus his political career, was over. Much to Gorbachev's credit he didn't try to hold the union together by force.

So here is what is so amazing. When Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Minsk, another young man was assigned to help him improve speaking Russian. There was nothing especially remarkable about the two, or about the electronics factory where they worked.

Oswald would be the first of the two to become known. He would later return to the U.S. and shake the world by killing President John F. Kennedy.

Shushkevich would also become known. He would go on to a career in politics. He would host the meeting that resulted in the breakup of the Soviet Union, which was to be replaced by an organization called the Commonwealth of Independent States, and would be the first leader of the independent nation of Belarus. Shushkevich would make the phone call, following the meeting, informing Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union, and thus his political career, was over.

Isn't it eerie how, just as Lee Harvey Oswald picked up a gun and ended the life of the president of his country, his former language teacher in Minsk would one day pick up a phone and tell the leader of his country that his political career, as well as the country, was at an end.

We know that, at the time of the language lessons, Shushkevich could never have imagined that his student would someday return to the U.S. and kill it's president. But could Oswald have imagined that his language teacher would someday host the meeting that would end the Soviet Union and then call the leader of the country to tell him that the country was over?