Hand-addressed airmail envelope, 6.5 x 3.75, addressed by Lee Harvey Oswald to his brother, "Mr. R. Oswald, 7313 Davanport St., Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.A.," adding his name and return address at the Hotel Metropol, Moscow, in Russian in the upper left. The envelope bears two Russian stamps and a postmark on the front, and is annotated "Rec. 11-13-59" on the reverse. In fine condition, with expected edge tears from opening.
This was part of Warren Commission Exhibit No. 294, and is illustrated in the Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XVI. It contained a letter of November 8, 1959, sent shortly after Oswald's arrival in the Soviet Union. In his testimony before Congress, Robert Oswald identified it as 'the first letter Lee had written to me from Russia.' In it, Lee Harvey Oswald chastised his brother for calling the decision a mistake, and declared his intention to remain in the USSR: 'I have been told that I will not have to leave the Soviet Union if I did not care to. This then is my decision. I will not leave this country, the Soviet Union under any conditions. I will never return to the United States which is a country I hate. Some day perhaps soon and then again perhaps in a few years I will become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but it is a very legal process in any event. I will not have to leave the Soviet Union and I will never leave.' In the proceedings of the Warren Commission, the letter was used as evidence of Oswald's state of mind at the time of his defection. A remarkable and historically significant piece.
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