The Finland File: How Did Oswald Get to the Soviet Union?

The Finnish intelligence service declassified its file on the accused assassin. What did we learn?

Lee Harvey Oswald’s Soviet visa, indicating he was entitled to reside in Moscow until Oct. 22, 1959. (Credit: The Portal to Texas History/Dallas Municipal Archives)

When Lee Harvey Oswald, the future accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, started his two-year journey to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1959, he was not yet 20 years old. After being discharged from the Marines, Oswald traveled from Texas to England to a distant nation called Finland, a country unknown to many Americans, next to the big U.S.S.R. It must have been quite a shock to travel from the warm climes of Texas to cool Finland in late autumn.

Oswald’s passage through Finland from Oct. 10-15, 1959 has raised many questions, including how a high school dropout knew to travel to Helsinki, one of the only places in Europe where it was possible to get a visa to enter the Soviet Union — in a matter of minutes, not weeks. The CIA and the Warren Commission were never able to determine how Oswald traveled from London to Helsinki.