Communistic Tendencies
The Writings and Beliefs of Lee Harvey Oswald
Before the rifle,
there were the writings.
Long before Lee Harvey Oswald became inseparably associated with November 22, 1963, he left behind an extensive written record.
Letters. Political essays. Personal notes. Manuscripts. Correspondence. Speeches. Organizational material. Marginal annotations. Propaganda. And documents that, in most cases, have never been fully examined using modern forensic techniques.
Communistic Tendencies approaches Oswald through that record.
Rather than beginning with the assassination, the book asks a more fundamental question: What did Lee Harvey Oswald actually believe, and how did those beliefs develop?
OSWALD IN HIS OWN WORDS
Oswald has been interpreted for more than sixty years by investigators, journalists, historians, psychologists, friends, family members, conspiracy researchers, and authors.
This book takes a different approach. Wherever possible, it returns to Oswald himself.
What did he write?
What did he underline?
What did he copy?
What political organizations interested him?
What literature influenced him?
Which ideas remained consistent over time, and which ones changed?
When Oswald’s writings are placed back into chronological order, a political and ideological development begins to emerge that is difficult to see when the documents are examined individually.
Communistic Tendencies follows that development through Oswald’s own surviving record.
MORE THAN A COLLECTION OF WRITINGS
This is not simply a compilation of Oswald documents.
The documents themselves became evidence.
Original archival materials were examined using modern forensic and imaging techniques, including 3D surface modeling, oblique lighting, infrared examination, and the study of indented writing.
These methods allow a document to be examined not only for what is visible on its surface, but also for physical evidence that may have been impressed into the paper, obscured, erased, or overlooked.
In some instances, those examinations revealed details that required the historical record to be looked at again.
Those findings are presented in the book.
THE DOCUMENT BENEATH THE DOCUMENT
Paper can preserve evidence long after the writing itself is gone.
The pressure of a pen or pencil can leave impressions on sheets beneath it. Erasures can disturb paper fibers. Surface variations may survive even when ordinary photography shows nothing unusual.
For Communistic Tendencies, original Oswald documents were treated as physical artifacts rather than simply as reproduced pages.
That distinction matters.
The objective was not merely to read what Oswald wrote.
It was to examine what the documents themselves might still contain.
AN IDEOLOGY IN DEVELOPMENT
Oswald’s political identity did not appear overnight. His surviving writings touch repeatedly on Marxism, communism, the Soviet Union, capitalism, class, race, Cuba, American foreign policy, revolution, and his own place within those political systems.
The book examines material ranging from his better-known writings and correspondence to personal notes, address-book entries, organizational literature, annotations, pamphlets, and other surviving papers. Some documents reinforce one another.
Others appear contradictory. Still others take on greater significance only when they are placed beside something Oswald wrote months or years earlier. The result is not a simple political label. It is a record of an individual attempting to construct his own worldview.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF OSWALD BOOK
Most books about Lee Harvey Oswald eventually arrive at Dealey Plaza.
Communistic Tendencies spends much of its time somewhere else.
At a desk.
Inside a notebook.
In a library.
In political correspondence.
In pamphlets and propaganda.
In handwritten annotations.
And in the physical documents Oswald left behind.
The assassination remains part of his history, but it is not the starting point of this investigation.
The writings are.
WHAT THIS BOOK EXAMINES
Among the material explored in Communistic Tendencies are Oswald’s political writings and manuscripts; his correspondence; his involvement with and interest in Marxist, communist, socialist, and pro-Castro organizations; his reading and annotations; personal notes and address-book entries; political literature and propaganda; and original archival documents subjected to modern forensic examination.
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