Sometime in the second week of March, Miss Katherine Mallory, who was on tour in Minsk with the University of Michigan symphonic band, found herself surrounded by curious Russian citizens. A young man who identified himself as a Texan and former marine stepped out of the crowd and asked if she needed an interpreter; he interpreted for her for the next 15 or 20 minutes. Later he told her that he despised the United States and hoped to stay in Minsk for the rest of his life. Miss Mallory is unable to swear that her interpreter was Oswald, but is personally convinced that it was he.638

A few days later, probably on March 17, Oswald attended a trade union dance with a friend, Erik Titovyets, at the Palace of Culture for Professional Workers in Minsk.639 The dance followed a lecture by a Russian woman who had recently returned from a trip to the United States.640 Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova arrived too late to hear the lecture 641 but was at the dance. Oswald noticed her and asked Yuriy Merezhinskiy, the son of the lecturer and a. friend of both Oswald and Marina, to introduce him to her. Oswald asked her to dance. According to the diary, they liked each other immediately and he obtained her telephone number before she left.642 Marina testified that she told Oswald that she might see him at another dance, but did not give him her telephone number.643 Oswald was smitten.644

Marina Prusakova was 19 years old when she met Oswald. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1395, p. 270.) She was born on July 17, 1941, at Severodvinsk (formerly Molotovsk),Arkhangel Oblast', Russia.645 A few years later, her mother, Klavdiya Vasilievna Prusakova, married Aleksandr Ivanovich Medvedev, who became the only father Marina knew.646 While she was still a young girl, Marina went to Arkhangel'sk, Arkhangel Oblast', to live with her maternal grandparents, Tatyana Yakovlevna Prusakova and Vasiliy Prusakov. Her grandfather died when Marina was about 4 years old; she continued to live with her grandmother for some time.647 When she was not more than 7, she moved to Zguritva, Moldavian SSR (formerly called Bessarabia) to live with her mother and stepfather, who was an electrical worker.648 In 1952, the family moved to Leningrad,649 where her stepfather obtained a job in a power station.650 Marina testified that neither he nor her mother was a member of the Communist Party.651

In Leningrad, Marina attended the Three Hundred and Seventy-Fourth Women's School. After she had completed the seventh grade at the school in 1955,652 she entered the Pharmacy Teknikum for special training, which she had requested on the ground that her mother was ill and Marina might need to have a specialty in order to support herself. While she was st the Teknikum, she joined the Trade Union for Medical Workers 653 and, in her last year there, worked part time in the Central Pharmacy in Leningrad. She graduated from the Teknikum with a diploma in pharmacy in June 1959.

Marina's mother had died in 1957, during Marina's second year at the Teknikum; she continued to live with her stepfather, but had little contact with him. She testified that she did not get along with