An Assassin Abroad: Peter Savodnik Talks About 'The Interloper' For most of us, Lee Harvey Oswald exists most vividly in downtown Dallas, poised to make the worst kind of history. In his new book, "The Interloper," Peter Savodnik recounts Oswald's time living and working in the Soviet Union. He went in 1960, with the hopes of building a permanent existence there after a childhood of frequent moves. He found his future wife, and became a father for the first time, but he returned to the United States in 1962, bitterly disappointed in his failure to start over in Russia. Mr. Savodnik argues that this time overseas reveals a great deal about Oswald's personality and his infamous crime. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Savodnik discussed Oswald's time in Minsk, the Russian view of conspiracy theories and more. Why did the Soviets allow Oswald to stay in the country after he arrived? There were probably two reasons: First, Oswald had tried to kill himself, which rattled the KGB. They had never encountered an American who wanted to stay in the Soviet Union that much, and they were probably worried about what he might do if they forcibly escorted him back to Helsinki. Oswald arrived in Moscow a few weeks after Khrushchev returned from his first, successful visit to the United States, and there was a brief period of warming between the superpowers, and the Soviets were more sensitive to any issues - for example, an ex-Marine trying to kill himself in Russia - that might complicate things. Second, there was always the possibility that Oswald might prove useful. Up to that point, he had not been useful, but that could have changed. This would explain why the KGB allowed other Americans who ventured to Russia at this time to stay even though they had little obvious value to the Kremlin. The KGB's handling of Oswald was somewhat routine. Why did they send him to Minsk, in Belarus, instead of the Ukraine, where they had sent other Americans at that time? In the book, I note that most American defectors at this time were sent to the Ukraine, and I think that would have been better for Oswald. In the Ukraine, I suspect, he would have had an easier time building a life for himself. Did the Soviets think about things in this way? This was probably a bureaucratic matter. All they really cared about was sending him somewhere far away from Moscow and watching him closely. They could accomplish both in Lviv, Odessa, Dushanbe, Minsk - any provincial city in the imperium. You write that Oswald's moving to the Soviet Union "must be seen as a refutation of the place he came from. Oswald was not only eager to start over. He was filled with anger and even rage. In what ways were the refutation and the rage political in nature, if they were at all? I don't think they were political. I think they were dressed in a political garb, and I am sure that Oswald believed they were political - ideological - but I think that was simply Oswald's confusion, his lack of insight into himself. Oswald, like many people, tended to conflate things. What he really wanted was to escape his mother and the state of permanent rootlessness that she had concocted for him, but instead of seeing things for what they were, he turned them into a crusade. What started out as resentment directed at his mother morphed into an all-consuming rage directed at society and then, more pointedly, at the United States and all the things the United States, in Oswald's mind, symbolized. Returning to the United States, Oswald wrote a long essay called "The Collective." What did it contain? Is there anything in it that foreshadowed the assassination? If you mean, does Oswald hint at some hatred for President Kennedy or does he discuss political violence or assassination, then no, there is nothing in "The Collective," just like there is nothing in any of Oswald's political fragments, that anticipates Nov. 22, 1963. What makes "The Collective" so fascinating is, first, it offers a window into daily life in Minsk in the early sixties; and, second, it offers a window into Oswald - how he conceived of the Soviet Union, communism, history, World War II, the rebirth of Minsk and his place in it. You spoke to some people who knew him during his time in the Soviet Union. Do any of them have strong opinions - for or against - about conspiracy theories? Everyone I met who had known Oswald in Minsk believes that Oswald either did not assassinate Kennedy or that he was a puppet of the people who are really responsible, so you could say that all of them are conspiracy theorists. There are two reasons for this, generally speaking: First, almost all of these people were either friends with or friendly acquaintances of Oswald, and it's very hard for them to reconcile their memories of him with the assassination. Second, and this is probably more important, many Russians have a unique capacity for not trusting. They tend to assume that established wisdoms or party lines are just that - party lines - and that they are being lied to, that the world is a much darker and more complicated place than Americans realize. You could say many Russians adhere to the inverse of Occam's razor: Whatever is most complex is likeliest; or, conversely, the simplest explanation is the least believable. From the Russian perspective, any conspiracy theory is more credible than the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman and that he acted alone. You write that Oswald "did not enjoy violence, but violence found him; it forced itself on him when he was no longer able to avoid it." But in assassinating Kennedy he obviously forced violence into being. Why do you think he shifted, in essence, from being suicidal to homicidal? I don't think he shifted exactly. I think that he had an elevated opinion of himself and that he wanted to escape the life that he felt he had been confined to, and he must have grasped that after he killed President Kennedy, after he had quite literally expropriated history, everything that had come before would be over, no matter what. You don't need Jack Ruby to end Oswald's life. You just need Oswald. Did he expect he would actually die? Did he care? Probably not much. Do you feel pity for Oswald? People make decisions. They may be strongly influenced by their parents or whatever, but ultimately those decisions are theirs, and they should be held accountable. That said, Oswald as wandering man, or alienated American, or interloper, is not so uncommon. There are many Americans, probably more now than ever before, who feel alienated from America. What distinguishes Oswald from almost all his fellow interlopers is he decided to give voice to that sense of alienation by murdering someone instead of, say, writing a novel about a road trip or occupying Wall Street. Why didn't the presence of his wife and kids help him feel more grounded or more hopeful when he came back to the United States? Other people were mostly incidental to Oswald. In his diary entries and letters, one of the things that's most striking is his lack of empathy. There are moments when that comes through, but they're very rare. He seems not really to care much about other people. He has a tendency to steer everything back to himself. If he had not been this way, he might have asked himself some important questions before he murdered the president, starting with: How will this affect my family?