[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

who she interviewed in Moscow with “the dangerous ‘Oswald,’ the man who shot the
President.” 182
McMillan sought to explain the assassination by stressing the tempestuous nature
of Oswald’s marriage to Marina, the many disappointments of Oswald’s life, and
psychological factors. Marina and Lee’s relationship, according to McMillan, “was
founded on a mutual willingness, indeed a mutual need, to inflict and accept pain. They
were deeply and reciprocally dependent.” 183 Marina herself had a troubled childhood
and upbringing. She was born in 1941, the illegitimate daughter of a father she never
knew. Her mother died when she was a teenager, and her stepfather treated her cruelly.
Oswald met Marina in Minsk, where she was living with her aunt and uncle and working
as a pharmacist.
Oswald courted Marina only after having been rejected by another woman, Ella
Germann, a Soviet Jew. Oswald claimed in his diary that he married Marina to get back
at Germann. Even so, the author argued that the marriage worked reasonably well in the
Soviet Union while Oswald was away from his mother, had a good income and apartment
by Soviet standards with a boost from the authorities in the form of a “Red Cross”
subsidy, and no worries about finding work. But Oswald wrote in his diary that he had
become disenchanted with the Soviet Union because of the regimentation of the society
and lack of social and professional opportunities. He had decided to return to the United
States. As McMillan put it, Oswald’s “need for his mother’s love” was not met in
182 McMillan, 7.
183 McMillan, 231.
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