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LETTER 3: APRIL 27, 1963, TEXAS. Hello dear aunt Valya and uncle Ilya: It was a while ago that I got your letter and I was glad to receive it. But I got held up replying because of all sorts of domestic concerns. Forgive me. Right now I am living with our little daughter at our acquaintances in Irving, near Dallas. Alek has gone away to New Orleans. This is because he has no work, and there seem to be no prospects here. So we have decided to move over closer to the sea. Maybe he will be luckier in his birth place. We have money for about two months so all this is not terrible so far. In that time something should be found. Alka took all the things with him so it will be easier for me and Marinka to leave here on the bus. It is ten hours away. Probably we, that is, I and Marinka, Ruth, and the children will go by car. Ruth is great. She is an American woman. She is studying Russian at the university and is very glad I am living with her and able to help her learn Russian better. She divorced her husband and lives with her children but she is lonely alone at home. The husband comes twice a week to see the children. They in fact just do not live together, but officially they are not divorced. He finances the house where she lives and pays the bills. He is also happy that Ruth is not as lonely with me. We are thinking to go to New Orleans in a while. She was never there and would like to take a vacation. Alka left just two days ago. There is no letter yet, but he will write right away how it is there. We may leave soon so write to us at our Dallas postal box — the letter will be forwarded on. I do not know what our postal box number will be in New Orleans. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas, USA. Everything is fine. Our daughter is growing up healthy and she is a good girl. We and Alka love her very much and Alka looks after her. If she starts crying… you know, he is crazy. He gives you and uncle Ilya his regards and told me to write you after he leaves and I have more time. The weather is very good. There are rains and it is not too hot. I have been wearing little shorts and we all had time to get tanned. But it will be a little lonely here when Ruth leaves with her children for three days for the holidays in San Antonio. And Alka will not be here. I will watch television. Just the other day there was a broadcast from London of Princess Alexandra’s wedding. It was very festive and beautiful. It was held in a big ancient cathedral and the ceremony was very traditional. It was so interesting — I got goose-bumps. I am beginning to speak English a little and Ruth helps me too. I understand a lot but still need to systematically study. Which is what I do. We at last got Ogonek and Soviet Belorussia so we know what is happening in Minsk and everything in the Union. I have Russian books. Alka buys them for me in New York. That is, they send them from there: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin. When we have more dough we will see; I will buy some more. I do not have complete collections. Recently it was Easter and we went to a lake and Alka caught two big fish. They were 450 grams. On an ordinary hook. There were many vacationers and fishermen too. Everybody rushed with their rods to that spot but no more big fish were caught. Alka laughed that their fishing rods were twenty-thirty dollars kind, not like ours that cost 15 cents. We will be catching crabs and good fish in New Orleans. It is a port there. What will happen next I will write, but in the meantime I send you best wishes and to our acquaintances — especially the Andrianovs. Luda must be finishing — I wonder where they will send her. How are things? No answers from work. Innesa has been silent. She must be busy. I do not know who was born to Oleg. On this I end. I kiss and embrace you, Marina |
Marina Oswald and June, Dallas, January 1963.Photo by Lee Harvey Oswald. The format appears tobe similar to that of the notorious “backyard” photos of Oswald with a rifle. Lee sent this photo tohis friend Pavel in Minsk in 1963. Photo courtesy of Pavel Golovachev, Minsk, Belorussia. |
카테고리 보관물: Uncategorized
David Ferrie Old Roman Catholic Church Connection
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In 1962-1963 David Ferrie made seven long distance phone calls from New Orleans to an unlisted number in the (416) area code: Toronto Canada. In 1967, at the request of the New Orleans district attorney’s office, Metropolitan Toronto Police linked the unlisted number to Earl Anglin Lawrence James, a bishop in the Old Roman Catholic Church of North America, a shadowy and highly factionalized heretical sect in which Ferrie was reportedly ordained and subsequently defroked as a priest. (Ferrie has also been described in error as being a “bishop” in the sect; he was not.) The group’s “apostolic tables of succession” prominently identify Earl Anglin James as a bishop in their movement, a rank held by very few in the movement. See following links for more:
[ Tables of Apostolic Succession ] In a local press interview in November 1967, the schismatic bishop Earl Anglin James vehemently insisted he only received one call in his entire life from New Orleans “in March 1965 and it was from Mr. J. S. Martin. It was personal.” Earl James characterized the allegations of his links to David Ferrie and the JFK assassination as a smear campaign by factions within his controversial church. James insisted that he had never been in the State of Louisiana. The 1967 Metro Toronto Police / New Orleans DA communications are classified, but senior Toronto inspectors kept filing Earl James – JFK related reports into an informal historic correspondence file as “memos for letter files.” The last item in the file was a routine 1970 report on a stolen wallet recovered and returned by Toronto Police to Earl Anglin James. But prior to releasing the billfold to James, the police officer photocopied the troubling contents in the wallet and sent them to a senior Toronto Police homicide inspector, who subsequently deposited the copies into the “letter files.” While ostensibly James was a Canadian residing in Toronto, the items in his wallet suggest his presence in New Orleans in the early 1960’s, where presumably he met David Ferrie. Most curious are the Louisiana Department of Justice identification cards which James had in his billfold and his smuggling activities–of both, material and human beings. |
EARL ANGLIN JAMES: 1967 
JAMES: MAY 30 1956 
Lee Harvey Oswald and Lev Setyaev in Moscow
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Back to Moscow Part 1 MAIN PAGE |
Lev Setyaev
(Setyayev, Setiaev, Leo) According to the Warren Report :
“Oswald was probably interviewed in his hotel room by a man named Lev Setyayev, who said that he was a reporter for Radio Moscow seeking statements from American tourists about their impressions of Moscow, but who was probably also acting for the KGB. Two years later, Oswald told officials at the American Embassy that he had made a few routine comments to Setyayev of no political significance. The interview with Setyayev may, however, have been the occasion for an attempt by the KGB, in accordance with regular practice, to assess Oswald or even to elicit compromising statements from him; the interview was apparently never broadcast.”
[WR Appendix XIII Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald: SOVIET UNION]
I met Lev Setyaev in Moscow in 1991 and 1992 and videotaped interviews with him. He was still employed at Radio Moscow as the producer and host of a daily twenty-minute news show. He spoke relatively fluent English but appeared to have difficulty expressing ideas in the language. Of all the interviews I conducted in the Soviet Union, Setyaev’s was the most contradictory and disjointed account.
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CIA and FBI References to Leo Setyaev Lev Setyaev. An employee of Radio Moscow who was married to Annette Teshlich, who was the daughter of an American defector named Lillie Mae Rahm. Annette traveled to the Soviet Union in 1935 and on March 20, 1936 became a citizen of the USSR. For a number of years Annette worked as an announcer in the American section of Radio Moscow and was known as “Moscow Molly.” The CIA reported that she had “surprisingly factual and intimate details of life at U.S. bases in the Alaskan Command, ostensibly calculated to destroy troop morale at these bases. Annette K. Setyaeva presumably together with Leo (Lev) Setyaev was reported to be residing at Kotal’nicheskaya 1/13, Section V, Apt. 79, Moscow, USSR. The 1960 Moscow Telephone Directory lists a K.V. Khenkin, telephone B-74789 at the address Kotal’nicheskaya 1/13. No apartment number is listed. For The Deputy Director for Plans: JAMES ANGLETON CSCI 3/779,988 Distribution Orig. & 1 Addressee 1 – C/CI, 1 – C/CI/SIG, 1- C/CI/R&A, 1- C/SR, 1- C/SR/CI 2 – C/SR/CI/R (hold cy & comeback cy) 1- SR/O/US/dl, 1 – 201,248 SR/CI Research [Deleted ] February 11, 1964. The CIA reported: “This agency has no additional information on the Moscow telephone number V-3-65-88 which OSWALD connected with Lev Setyayev of Radio Moscow. The 1959 Moscow City telephone directory is unavailable, and the 1960 directory does not include any numbers in the V-3-65- series, however it is a plausible Moscow telephone number.” A number similar to V 3 65 93 was given by an employee of Radio Moscow to one CIA source as his office number, and to another source as his home number. The Setyaevs lived under the name of Annette’s first husband, K.V. Khenkin. CIA SEARCH ON RADIO BROADCAST MEMORANDUM FOR: Chief, [Deleted] SUBJECT: FBID and FDD Coverage of OSWALD Before the Assassination 1. Pursuant to your request I checked with FBID and FDD and obtained the following answers: a. FBID [Deleted] As Standard Operating Procedure, FBID would have recorded any mention of an American defector such as OSWALD. But upon checking their records at and headquarters and in London disclosed no pertinent entries. b. FDD [Deleted] As a standard operating procedure FDD would not have noted the name of an American defector. They concentrate their efforts toward recording Soviet personalities. A check of the FDD records disclosed no pertinent entries. 2. A recheck of all actual materials i.e. the Soviet radio and press releases for that period could be undertaken, but the task would be Herculean and a change in the statements in a and b above rather doubtful. A review of the results of monitoring Soviet foreign broadcasts at the time when an interview with LEE HARVEY OSWALD had supposedly been taped was conducted with negative results. Therefore, it is assumed that such a tape, if broadcast at all, was aired over a local USSR facility for internal consumption. [CIA 601-816] |
Setyaev vehemently denied that he was an informant for the KGB and complained that since being mentioned in the Warren Report as such, Soviet authorities have denied him permission to travel abroad. When I asked Setyaev what his Radio Moscow job was in 1959, he said he had worked in the “American Section” interviewing US tourists and guests such as visiting scientists, performing artists and businessmen. He would ask them about their general impressions of Moscow and about their “contacts” with Soviet citizens. Setyaev had even interviewed Pierre Salinger, JFK’s press secretary on his visit to Moscow.
Several times Setyaev stated that his questions involved asking tourists what kind of “contacts” they had with Soviets–including this little gem: “I asked them…about if they met…uh…Soviet officials and if they…uh…had contacts with scientific people…”
At this point I could not stop myself from challenging his assertion that he had no contact with the KGB, for even Intourist waiters had such contact routinely. I even gave Setyaev an easy way out, reminding him that it was common practice for the KGB to systematically collect information from citizens who had extended contacts with foreigners. Setyaev insisted that in his case, “they never did. I don’t know why, but they never did.” I disbelieved him.
During my two meetings with Setyaev, he never told me that in 1959 both his wife and his mother-in-law were US citizens who defected to the USSR. I learned about that only through the recent JFK document releases. [See sidebars at right and below .]
Lev Setyaev told me he was twenty-eight in 1959 and that he cruised the Intourist hotels in the center of Moscow recording interviews with American guests. On a date he cannot remember he was at the Metropole Hotel to interview an American businessman. A clerk from the Metropole alerted him to the fact that another American had arrived at the hotel: Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald’s room turned out to be exactly next door to the American he was to interview. (Setyaev does not remember who the American was.)
Setyaev stated that he knocked on Oswald’s door and introduced himself. Oswald invited him in and the first thing he said, according to Setyaev, was “I am a communist.” Setyaev felt this was a strange thing for the young American to say upon first meeting somebody.
Setyaev reiterated to me, that his Radio Moscow broadcast was intended to be a light tourist chatter type of show and that he specifically avoided political questions. He stated that Oswald had little to say about Moscow’s tourist sites as he had apparently not seen much. He only visited some “friendship society or language institute,” said Setyaev. (In his second interview with me, about ten months later, Setyaev said something different: that Oswald’s comments were “too political” to be of use for his show.) Setyaev insisted that when he returned to the radio station and listened to the tapes, he immediately bulk-erased them, deciding they were worthless for his broadcast.
In 1962, Oswald wrote about the interview: “I expressed delight in all the interesting places. I mentioned in this respect the University, museum of art, Red Square, the Kremlin. I remember I closed this two minute recording by saying I hoped our peoples would live in peace and friendship.” [CE 100]
Setyaev maintained, that while he could not place the exact date of his meeting with Oswald, it took place in the Metropole Hotel because he “never” had been in the Hotel Berlin. (This is strange as the Berlin had many tourists visiting and was one of the Intourist hotels in the center that Setyaev claimed he worked for interviews. The Berlin (now known as the Savoy) was only a few minutes walk away from the Metropole.)
With Setyaev insisting that the interview took place at the Metropole, we are led to conclude that it had to have occurred after October 28; after Oswald’s request for citizenship; after the KGB’s recommendation that Oswald be sent on his way; and after his “suicide attempt.” Therefore, one would also conclude, that Setyaev could not have been instrumental in the KGB’s initial evaluation of Oswald’s request for asylum. Setyaev went on to accurately describe to me the spectacular view from Oswald’s second floor room at the Metropole: the panorama of Sverdlov Square, the Hotel Moscva, and the Bolshoi Theater. This detailed memory did not strike me at the time as suspicious–I too had visited that room and was impressed by the vista outside the windows.
With a State Department cable [CE 935] stating that Oswald “recalled that he had been interviewed briefly in his room at the Metropole Hotel in Moscow on the third day after his arrival” I assumed that Oswald was perhaps referring to his arrival at the hotel , not in the USSR. I linked what I came to believe was the source of the Warren Report’s error to that statement. I was convinced that Setyaev’s interview took place at the Metropole Hotel, and therefore after Oswald was released from the Botkinskaya Hospital. I wrote so in The Third Decade in May 1992. Now, I can no longer be sure, for Setyaev’s previous links to American defections, throws an entirely different light on his statements to me in 1992. Three things seriously trouble me about Setyaev’s statements:
Firstly, he insists that Oswald made no mention to him of the fact that he was requesting Soviet citizenship when they first met. This is strange because it was common knowledge among staff back at Hotel Berlin, within Intourist, and probably at the Metropole. With the two hotels so close to each other, with the staff belonging to the same organization, perhaps even eating in the same cafeteria, it would be highly unlikely that news of the suicidal defecting American guest did not reach the Metropole. Moreover, Oswald did not disguise his intentions of defecting. He seemed to tell everybody, in what I believe, was a hope that they would pass the information on to the proper authorities.
Secondly, Setyaev had further meetings with Oswald: “two or three” more!
Thirdly, during those meeting, Setyaev says that Oswald then asked him to help with his application to the Supreme Soviet for citizenship. On first hearing, that did not make sense because Oswald had already sent his request out weeks earlier, upon his arrival, with the help of Rimma Shirakova. She was instructed after the “suicide” episode to continue assisting Oswald. My only explanation was perhaps Oswald was asking help from Setyaev with some kind of supplementary process. But there is another…
If the recently released CIA documents are correct (CIA HT/LINGUAL (June 1960) intercept on Setyaev indicated “he was involved in the translation and dissemination of documents which foreigners needed to become Soviet citizens.” ) [John Newman p. 198 ] then Oswald had chosen precisely the right person to ask for that kind of help. Setyaev, however, insists that he refused to help Oswald! Perhaps so. Why?
I asked Setyaev about his additional contacts with Oswald. Setyaev replied that when he first met Lee, as he was leaving, Oswald asked him to visit again because he needed his “help” but did not say what kind of help. Setyaev said that he might have given Oswald his work phone number at that point.
Setyaev said he had a negative first impression of Oswald: “I would say, yes, he was strange. He looked strange. He produced the impression of a person who was thinking some thought deep in his mind. He was quiet, he did not talk very much. When I asked him something he usually said yes or no–he did not explain in many words . . .he was self concerned, always thinking about something… He was displeased with life in general. He was such type of a man. There are always persons who are displeased with something whether it’s lack of money or poor health, or troubles in the family, with the wife, with children and so on. He was such a type of a man who is dissatisfied with life… I did not like him.”
Who called whom first, I asked. Despite the fact that Setyaev did not like Oswald, he says he it was he who phoned Lee to see “how he felt, what was he doing, could I help him. That’s all.”
How long after the first meeting? About ten days…two weeks at the most.
Why did you call? “Simply to speak with him. To maybe help him. He was lonely.”
The first time you met Oswald for what purpose did you think he was in Moscow? Setyaev replied, that he thought Lee was a tourist. Strangely, Setyaev expressed it as Oswald “had a tourist visa.” Setyaev seemed to ponder the question, and several times chose to say “he had a tourist visa” rather than simply say, “Oswald was a tourist.” It made me feel that Setyaev, in forming his statements to me, was reaching on his memory of a dossier, as opposed to his own first-hand impressions. Likewise, Setyaev said that Oswald told him he went to an “electronics school.” No other Russian witness recalls Oswald saying that, but in a 1999 declassified Soviet document, there is a notation that Oswald “was a student in his final year at an electrical trade school.” Was Setyaev’s recollection that Oswald told him he went to an “electronics school” a ‘dossier-memory’ too? Was Setyaev privy to Oswald’s KGB files when he was visiting Oswald?
If you thought Oswald was a tourist, then why did you expect to find him in his hotel room ten days later? Was that not a rather long time for an average tourist to be in Moscow? “I thought maybe I could help him,” Setyaev replied, skirting the question and contradicting his own previous statement that he refused to help Oswald.
But you didn’t like him; why help him?
“As a person, no…but if I could help him, why not? You often don’t like a certain person but if he needs help you help him.” (If he did not like him “as a person”, than as what? As a “subject” or “objective” as the Soviets say–a target?)
I asked for more details on Oswald’s request for help. Setyaev stated that at their second meeting, Oswald asked him to help draft a letter to the Supreme Soviet and take it there. Setyaev says he refused and only gave Oswald the address for the Presidium and told him to take it himself. “It was only a five minute walk from the hotel.”
Setyaev says that this was not the first time he had been asked by an American to assist in a defection–apparently he was asked previously by a “retired engineer” to help him draft a request for Soviet citizenship. Setyaev says he refused on that occasion as well. “I said, no, it’s up to you. I’m a Radio Moscow correspondent. I have nothing to do with such things.” Setyaev claimed he did not remember the name of the engineer and it was “maybe a year before.”
I started to ask Setyaev if he had ever come across the name “Webster”… Setyaev burst out: “No, no, it wasn’t Webster!” leaving me the impression he was well aware of Webster. [Webster was an American who defected roughly in the same time period that Oswald did. ] The “retired engineer” he was talking about, Setyaev expanded, was about seventy years old. After he had refused to assist him, the American returned home without seeking Soviet citizenship, Setyaev claimed.
During these meeting, which presumably took place in November, and perhaps even December, what was Oswald doing? “He was waiting for an answer… He sent an application to the Supreme Soviet Presidium for residence here, to stay here and he was waiting for that. And he was waiting for a long time. I don’t remember how long he stayed here but it was about two or three weeks…I think…as I imagine…he stayed in the hotel in order to pick up the telephone if someone rang him up.”
Did you speak with Oswald in Russian or English. It was always English. Setyaev never heard Oswald speak to anyone else in any language. “He was always alone… He didn’t want to see anybody. He was strange in this respect you know. He was lonely. He was self-concerned. He was thinking about something.”
Oswalds Diary: “Nov. 2. Fifteen days of utter loneliness. I refuse all reporters, phone calls. I remain in my room; I am racked with dysentery.
Nov. 17 – Dec. 30. I have bought myself two self-teaching Russian Language books. I force myself to study 8 hours a day. I sit in my room and read and memorize words. All meals I take in my room. Rimma arranged that. It is very cold on the streets so I rarely go outside at all for this month and a half. I see no one, speak to no one except every now and then Rimma, who calls the ministry about me.”
On their second or third meeting, Setyaev and Oswald went to see a movie playing in the Hotel Metropole. The film was The Ballad of a Soldier, a Soviet war movie. Oswald said after the movie, “Now I know what war is like.” Otherwise they would always meet in his room.
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Lev Setyaev in Oswald and the CIA “It appears that Setyaev was known to both the CIA and the FBI. A sensitive June 24, 1960 LINGUAL intercept, “60F24,” was addressed to Leo Setyaev by Charles John Pagenhardt . . .” [p. 193] “The June 1960 CIA HT/LINGUAL intercept on Setyaev indicated he was involved in the translation and dissemination of documents which foreigners needed to becombe Soviet citizens.” [p. 198] Source: CIA LINGUAL item 60F240; NARA, JFK Files, CIA Document Number 1572-1115-L (HT/LINGUAL was the CIA’s letter-opening operation which targetted on a yearly average 300 individuals. Both Oswald and Setyaev apparently were on this small select list of targets.) Newman also quotes an FBI report of an interview with Marina Oswald September 8, 1964, Dallas 100-10461 [CD 1546] “Marina [was] exhibited the following photographs which were obtained from Lellie May Rahm at Ketchikan, Alaska, on August 4, 1964. Rahn is the mother of Anita May Setyaeva. These photographs were described as follows: 1. Wedding photo of Marina (last name unknown.) At far left is head of Marina’s mother, Anita May Setyaeva (Setyaev), nee Zuggef and her son, Kostia Henkin; unknown woman, Marina (last name unknown) and Vashi (last name unknown) who is Marina’s husband, unknown man, woman, mand and woman.
2. Head photo of Anita May Setyaeva. Marina Oswald could identify none of the individuals… |
According to FBI Dallas, Report of Wallace Heitman and Hayden Griffin, September 8, 1964, Dallas 100-10461; [WC CD 1546] Marina Oswald stated to the FBI agents that:
“At the time of Marina’s first visit to Moscow with Oswald, he referred to his address book to find the name of an individual. It was Oswald’s intention to call this person on the telephone. He showed the name to Marina. This name she had identified from a photograph of one page of Oswald’s address book which contains the name written in the Latin alphabet, “Leo Setyaev.”
“Marina said Oswald tried to contact this person, but had been unsuccessful. Marina asked Oswald who this individual Leo Setyaev was. Oswald replied he was a man who had helped him make some money after his arrival in Moscow by assisting him in a broadcast for Radio Moscow. Marina asked Oswald what he had said, and he told her he had criticized the United States and said Russia was a better place in which to live. Marina asked him why he said this, and Oswald replied it was necessary to make this propaganda because at the time he had wanted to live in Russia.
“She advised further Setyaev had taken a photograph of Oswald during his visit to the latter at the Hotel Metropole. This photograph is one of the photographs of Oswald presently in possession of investigators of the assassination as Marina recalls seeing it. It is the photograph of Oswald standing in a room, in which he wears a black suit, a white shirt, and a tie. Marina said Oswald was quite worried in this photograph because she noted that a vein was standing out very noticeably on the right side of his face.”
I asked Setyaev if he had taken any photographs of Oswald. “No. Lee Harvey Oswald? No, it couldn’t be because I didn’t have a camera at that time…no,no,no,no it’s absolutely wrong. I didn’t have any camera at that time and I even didn’t know how to take photos. I learned it later on.” Were you accompanied by a photographer? No, no, no, we were alone. We were two in the room.”
Lee Harvey Oswald wrote some time after May of 1962:
“When I first came to Russia in the winter of 1959 my funds were limited, so after a certain time, after the Russians had assured themselves that I was really the naive American who believed in communism, they arranged for me to receive a certain amount of money every month. OK–it came technically through the Red Cross as financial help to a [Russian political immigrant?] but it was arranged by the MVD. I told myself it was simply because I was broke and everybody knew it. I accepted the money because I was hungry and there was several inches of snow on the ground in Moscow at that time. But what it really was, was payment for my denunciation of the US in Moscow in Oct November 1956 [sic] and a clear promise that for as long as I lived in the USSR, life would be very good. I didn’t realize all this, of course, for almost two years…. I have never mentioned the fact of these monthly payments to anyone. I do so in order to state that I shall never sell myself intentionaly, or unintentionly to anyone again.” [CE 25]
In [CE 100] Oswald writes: “I made a recording for Radio Moscow which was broadcast the following Sunday.”
If the Warren Report is correct, then the date of the broadcast would have been October 25. Otherwise, it would have been November 2 or 9, or later. There is no evidence that the broadcast took place however.
I asked Setyaev whether he saw Lee after Oswald heard that he is being sent to Minsk. Setyaev said that he only spoke with him on the telephone, and gave him his home address so that he could write him. (And that in the end, Oswald never did write.) At first Setyaev was very specific that he never saw Oswald in that later period. The problem was that Setyaev’s address was written, in what Setyaev upon seeing, agreed was his own handwriting. Setyaev therefore must have met with Oswald at least once after Oswald knew he was to reside in Minsk. (Setyaev also insisted, that he did not black-out the writing below his address.) What was interesting in Setyaev’s conduct during the interview when he was confronted by his own handwritten address was that rather than say he made a mistake, Setyaev suddenly changed his account in mid-stream, as if he had never denied meeting Oswald in the first place. He attempted to create the impression that perhaps we misunderstood him, or that he simply had not arrived to that part of the story yet. This is a common defensive position, track-jumping, taken by those suddenly caught stating an untruth and having no where to run with their mistatement.
One would think that Setyaev as a KGB operative would be better skilled at disassembly, but there is no evidence that Setyaev was a full-time trained KGB officer. With his wife and mother-in-law being American defectors and his position as a journalist, he was probably a trusted collaborator of the KGB but not necessarily a staff officer. Nor is it necessarily conclusive that his suspected role as somebody who assisted US defectors at the end of their journey to the USSR was an operational function of the KGB. It certainly would have been conducted confidentially with the close collaboration of the KGB, but could have been the function of a department of the Soviet government genuinely concerned with effectively integrating the defectors into their new life in Russia.
SPECULATIONS & CONCLUSIONS:
1. WAS I A TARGET OF KGB DISINFORMATION IN 1992?
It is entirely possible that Lev Setyaev, acting officially on behalf of the Soviet Union, assisted Oswald in his application for Soviet citizenship in 1959. The only new evidence we have since 1963 that Oswald was not contacted by Setyaev in the first three days of his arrival, is my own 1991-1992 interviews with Setyaev. Interestingly enough, to my knowledge, Setyaev has refused to give interviews to anybody else since.
For reasons of Russian national security–for who knows who else Setyaev might have assisted in the past and where they are today–the KGB may very well wish to cover up Setyaev’s role. Furthermore, the KGB has catagorically denied any relationship or contact, however innocent, with Oswald other than surveillance and evaluation of him as a defector. This would be more the reason to disinform me of Setyaev’s, and therefore the KGB’s more active role in assisting Oswald’s defection at the end, even if it was against the recomendations of the KGB. (The KGB originally recommended that Oswald be expelled, but were overruled by ministerial officials. (At least according to documents released from the Soviet archives. One can, of course, question the credibility of those sources as well, but then one might as well just forget the whole thing for then nothing is knowable, nothing can ever be trusted, determined or resolved: game over.) )
Setyaev’s recollections of the view from the Metropole, upon which I finally chose to base my belief in his account, could have easily been scripted for my consumption. Indeed, when speaking, Setyaev appeared entirely unsure of the chain-of-events, stumbling about his recollections, without giving me much to grasp on–except for one thing–his memory that the interview took place at the Metropole Hotel. Setyaev’s interview is full of remarks like “it was maybe ten days later; maybe two weeks at the most; two or three times; how can anybody remember thirty years back; if the Warren Report says it was on that date then it probably must have been; it very well could have been…” Everything was vague and nebulas with only one precise underlying recollection: it was the Metropole Hotel. It was left up to me to conclude ‘all on my own’ that the contact took place after Oswald’s release from the hospital. Setyaev himself, offered no opinion on the date, thus taking on the appearence of an impartial witness. In the process of fitting his disjointed recollections, and Oswald’s statements that the meeting was at the Metropole, I would also conclude, therefore, that Setyaev could not have been instrumental in Oswald’s initial evaluation by the KGB.
My presence in Moscow and my intentions were well known to the KGB in 1991, as I had filed a goofy Soviet version of a Freedom of Information request to them in January of 1991 through my Soviet broadcast partners. The president of the television company I was working with, was the son of a senior KGB officer. I began the interviews in June: there was lots of time to prepare Seteyaev for me. Setyaev could also been disinforming me on his own initiative, without any KGB operational input.
On camera and off, Setyaev ventured all sorts of opinions as to the nature of defectors, without once revealing to me that he had personal knowledge of such persons in the form of his wife and mother-in-law. (“It never ends in good things,” he said of defections.) I was told by others that there was a rumor that Setyaev had once been married to an American journalist in the 1950’s–a woman much older than him, but that it ended sadly and that it was not something you brought up with him. As usual with television interviews, there were time constraints. Setyaev was available only for an hour before he had to go back to his show. I had no time to go on a fishing expedition about the rumor of an American wife — although I should have risked it. Now we will never know what his response would have been back then and in what direction it might have led me.
If indeed Setyaev innocently called on Oswald only to interview him, and he was asked by Oswald to help with his defection, then the fact that both Setyaev’s wife and mother-in-law were American defectors at that time, is one hell of a coincidence! Yet another in an ocean of coincidence that seem to engulf the JFK assassination. (Which leads me back to the answer I always give when asked, who do I think assassinated JFK. “Coincidence killed him,” I reply.)
2. U.S. INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONAL INTEREST IN LEE HARVEY OSWALD?Everyone is looking for a “mission” for Oswald in the USSR on the assumption that he was an intelligence agent or was at least being manipulated or run by US intelligence. One of the major goals of my journey to Russia was to see if there were any clues to that answer over there. I found none to satisfy me.
a.) It is highly unlikely Lee Harvey Oswald was an intelligence agentwith an assigned mission in the USSR .
Firstly, Lee Harvey Oswald was only nineteen years old upon his arrival in Moscow. The US did not send teenagers on a clandestine missions into the heart of the Soviet Union–especially those with a record of behaviour as unpredictable as Oswald’s. To those critics who suggest that his behavior, such as his barrack room russophilia, was part of a carefully curated intelligence legend, I respond then he must have therefore been selected for the service at an even younger age than nineteen — as young as seventeen — even fifteen and sixteen if we account for his adolescent Marxism prior to enlistment.
If Oswald was assigned on a mission, especially one without the protection of diplomatic cover, he would have been intensively trained and conditioned before he would have been sent across the Iron Curtain. During the desperate days of World War II, for example, both Allied and Nazi agents received at minimum two months of intensive solid non-stop drop-dead training in remote and restricted facilities before they were dispatched into enemy territory disguised as defectors, tourists (yes folks, there was a tourist industry in occupied Europe during World War 2, at least prior to June 1944 and even after) or finally, dropped by parachute. Nothing in Oswald’s education, personality, skills, or record qualified him for such training, nor does there appear any significant gaps in Oswald’s military records where such intensive training could have taken place. (Except perhaps, I will grant, his time in the Marine brig, of which there seem to be no witnesses and no accounts.) Nor am I aware of any non-Slavic US citizen intelligence operatives, of any age, being dispatched behind the Iron Curtain without the protection of diplomatic cover. Some assassination historians, like John Newman, speculate that Oswald might have been used as a dangle to asceratian the Soviet’s knowledge and interest in intelligence on the U-2. Such a dangle could have easily and safely been performed in the US or any neutral territory with a Soviet embassy, without the complications and risks involved in sending an agent out of reach behind the iron curtain.
b.) It is possible Lee Harvey Oswald was “run” or manipulated by US intelligence without his knowledge, or tracked as he went about on his own agenda.
Such a proposal does fold neatly into later allegations that Oswald was deliberately set-up as a patsy for the assassination of President Kennedy by individuals with current or former intelligence community connections. It is entirely possible, that back in 1959, just by being himself , Oswald could have been of use in ‘flushing’ out a Soviet operative instrumental in the defection of US citizens to the USSR, such as Setyaev is alleged to be . Defections were a high priority concern at that time, because several American defectors during Oswald’s era were US military personnel–some from military intelligence branches stationed in Germany.
In his book, Oswald and the CIA, John Newman has convincingly shown that Oswald’s CIA “201” file is somehow related to the issue of American defectors to the USSR. What is unknown and unclear is whether Oswald’s file was created by virtue of his being a defector himself, or whether there is a more complex and deeper relationship.
How US intelligence would have exploited Oswald’s contact with Setyaev is a matter of speculation as well. It could have been strictly an operation to identify Setyaev and his methodology. It would however, have meant that the CIA had to maintain some sort of control over or communication with Oswald. I did uncover evidence that Oswald was in communication with somebody in the USA at a time it is claimed that nobody knew his location. [ see: future link here ] Certainly in this scenario, Setyaev’s arrival at Oswald door like room service, was entirely predictable if Setyaev was suspected as an undercover consultant for incoming defectors. Furthermore, Setyaev’s claim to have refused to assist Oswald can make sense in the context of the negative view that the KGB had of Oswald. Setyeaev could have been instructed to maintain contact but not to take any bait such as a request for help with the defection.
If I was in correct in my 1992 conclusions that Oswald met with Setyaev in the Metropole Hotel in late October or early November, then Oswald’s apparently repeated requests to Setyaev for assistance with his claim for Soviet citizenship, despite the fact that Oswald already had the process well underway by then with Rimma Shirakova’s help, are evidence of some sort of coached provocation by Oswald against Setyaev.
If I am in error in my conclusion, and the Warren Report is correct in their’s that Oswald met Setyaev in the first few days of his arrival in the USSR, than there is much more to learn about the nature of Setyaev’s and the KGB’s conduct towards Oswald. If Setyaev’s contacts with Oswald began upon his arrival and continued until his departure to Minsk, then the scope of their relationship is much more complex and extensive than what the Warren Commission ventured in their conclusions.
Lee Harvey Oswald Minsk Audio Tapes
The Lee Harvey Oswald Minsk Audio Tapes Video Segment
Ernst Titovetz plays the tape, Minsk, May 1992.
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When Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in Minsk in the winter of 1960, Ernst Titovetz was a medical student avidly studying English. Through mutual friends from the television factory where Oswald worked, Titovetz met Oswald. Titovetz and Oswald became friends and often went out together in search of female company. Titovetz wanted to learn how to speak English as a native American speaker and one day in the summer or autumn of 1960, invited Oswald to a language lab with reel-to-reel audiotape recorders at the Minsk Foreign Languages Institute. There Titovetz recorded a series of tapes, for the purpose, he says, of studying Oswald’s accent and pronunciation.
When I met Titovetz in 1991 he was a senior medical scientist . Despite his academic success, he appeared bitter and deeply suspicious. Although he told us of the recording sessions, when I asked about what happened to the tapes, he was vague. It would take nearly a year before Titovetz revealed that he indeed had the audio recordings. Convincing him to play the tapes for me and to allow me to sample a minute portion took several more months. Titovetz believes, and perhaps rightly so, that the tapes are very valuable and fears playing them or revealing too much of their content. Titovetz played the tapes for me in return for my mediating the use of his tapes by PBS’s Frontline documentary on Oswald (1993). He did not allow me to take any notes and aside from the 30 seconds I was allowed to record on video, I could not copy the tapes.
The majority of the nearly two hours of audio recordings consisted of Oswald reading from text books, college guides, works of literature, and other reading material found at the language school. Oswald read from works of Shakespeare, Faulkner, and I remember him in particular reading a passage from The Killers by Hemingway. Several segments consisted of Oswald and Titovetz improvising a press interview. Although one should not make more out of this than necessary, Oswald did present himself as an assassin in the mock interview. The Frontline documentary used that particular portion of the tape, where Oswald is asked by Titovetz why he’s under arrest, and he replies: “I killed some derelicts on the Bowery. I killed them with a machinegun. Then I killed a woman on a bridge carrying a loaf of bread.”
“Why did you do that?” “I wanted her bread,” Oswald retorts. But the sense of the improvisation was very light and playful – there was no sense of intensity or brooding menace. Oswald sounds boyish and his assassin fantasy is offered in a very sophomoric and light-hearted tone. The significance of these tapes are twofold. Firstly, since we have voice recordings of Oswald from 1963 (from after his arrest and from the radio interview he did in New Orleans in the summer) the Minsk tapes offer us a possibility to voice-print identify Oswald between 1960 and 1963. This would lay to rest any theories that Oswald was substituted in the Soviet Union – at least from the summer-autumn of 1960. The Oswald in the Minsk tapes is with little doubt the same Oswald from the 1963 recordings. Secondly, the tapes are a rare glimpse into Oswald’s reading disability. Even in the short portion on this web page, we can hear how Oswald has dyslexic obstacles in his attempt to read the word “matriculate.” And for those who wonder how is it that Oswald sometimes can write well, while at other times his spelling is completely mangled, we hear in Oswald’s own voice the obvious solution: “I’ll look that one up,” he says.
I had hoped that there might be some samples of Oswald speaking Russian on the tapes, so that we can once and for all resolve just exactly how well did Oswald speak Russian. The fact that there was no Russian spoken by Oswald on the tape, supports Titovetz’s assertion that the tapes were made for the purpose of studying Oswald’s accent.
Copyright © Peter Wronski 1991-2004
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Lee Harvey Oswald Project Description
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[ BACK TO HOME PAGE] Copyright © Peter Wronski 1991-2004 |
I was the first Westerner ever to interview Russians who knew Lee Harvey Oswald during his journey to Moscow and Minsk from 1959 to 1962. In some cases, not even the KGB had interviewed the witnesses I located.
When JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, I was seven years-old, living in Toronto, Canada.. I understood it was a momentous event because all the cartoons on TV were pre-empted for the next three days. The headlines in the newspapers that my father brought home were enormous and everybody talked of nothing else. In Toronto we received all the US television channels from Buffalo and Canadian TV covered the event extensively. On Sunday I was playing with some toy cars on the floor when I heard my cousins gasp in the next room as they saw Oswald shot dead on live TV.
I was probably around twelve when I began to clue-in as to who Oswald was and the nature of the criticism leveled at the Warren Commission Report. Soon after the House Select Committee on Assassinations Hearings took place when I was in high-school and I followed the proceedings. In the post-Pentagon Papers-Watergate era I avidly read Kennedy assassination conspiracy literature, and found no reason to disbelieve the various accusations.
Somewhere along the way I read Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s Marina and Lee and Jay Epstein’s Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and became aware that Oswald had spent time in the country of my ancestors: Russia. In those pages I also learned that despite numerous requests, the Soviets had consistently refused to allow any Western government investigators, journalists, researchers or academics to interview Russian citizens who had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. While we knew their names and faces from the letters and photographs seized by the FBI from the Oswalds, the witnesses themselves remained mute and unreachable behind the Iron Curtain.
In 1988 as Gorbachev began to liberalize the Soviet Union, I made my first trips into Russia as a television documentary producer. As I spoke Russian relatively fluently, I found myself frequently producing documentaries in the Soviet Union on a variety of subjects.
In late 1990 I was sitting in some bleak Moscow hotel bar with my cinematographer Tony Wannamaker when the late night conversation turned to what I was planning to do next. I had no idea; but it made me think; and suddenly I remembered the “missing” Russian witnesses.
The idea of locating and interviewing the witnesses began to obsess me. I never undertook any research of my own in the area of the Kennedy assassination but I was familiar with some of the literature and was fascinated with the phenomena: the rumors of the Byzantine conspiracies, the stories of the murdered witnesses, and the special language of its own with terms like “grassy knoll”, “magic bullet”,”umbrella man”, “badge man”, “babushka lady”, “Frame 313.” It was a world as remote and as mysterious to me as the surface of planet Mars. I saw a chance to take a voyage to this world and see things for myself — wander into a territory unexplored and untouched by any previous investigators or researchers (other than the KGB, I presumed.)
Around that time private television production houses began to be formed in the USSR, and having facilitated some things for them in Europe, I found some in my debt. One such company, produced a news journal called Vzglyad (“Viewpoint”). They asked what could they do for me in the USSR in return for the help I had given them..
Based on the names and addresses I supplied to Vzglyad from Oswald’s address book (as reproduced in the Warren Hearings Exhibit volumes) they began to search for the witnesses. Vzglyad was very well adapted for the task. In the winter of 1991, they were the showpiece of new Soviet media freedom. Often critical of official government policies, even though they were broadcast on state television (Gosteleradio), Vzglyad was often referred to as the “Sixty Minutes” of Soviet television. Vzglyad was also run by Misha Lyubimov, the son of Mikhail Petrovich Lyubimov, a retired senior KGB officer, who coincidentally, was stationed in Finland as the deputy of Gregory Golub, the Soviet official in Helsinki who issued Oswald’s visa — a KGB officer as well. (I did not learn this until much later.)
Around April 1991, I was contacted by Vzglyad and informed that they had located many of the witnesses I had been seeking in Moscow and Minsk. They urged me to come immediately as things in the USSR were going badly. Vzglyad had been summarily taken off-air and there was serious talk of an impending coup. (The coup attempt would actually take place in August–but failed.) I was told that this perhaps might be the only moment in history to slip through the bureaucracy and interview the witnesses. Vzglyad would contribute some $10,000 in services, such as hotel rooms, local transport, support crew, but I needed to raise another $40,000 for a primary crew, travel to the USSR, the broadcast-quality equipment with which to videotape the interviews and freight costs to ship it to Moscow. Remarkably, in a span of several weeks I was able to find $20,000 in cash from a private investor in Canada and the remaining $20,000 in equipment from an Italian television production company based in Venice — Panavideo. My curiosity had a high ticket price — $50,000.
In June we arrived in the USSR and videotaped the first series of interviews. The Western crew consisted of myself, cinematographer Tony Wannamaker, and my co-producers Sergio Pastrello and John Gundy. Through Vzglyad we had also applied to the KGB to view their files on Oswald but were constantly being stalled. In August, the attempted coup unfolded and collapsed and suddenly things began to open in the USSR. ABC-News which had more clout (and dollars) than myself or Vzglyad made the same request we did, and were quickly given a “peek” into the Oswald dossier in November 1991. In the meantime I had returned that same month and taped further interviews and would continue to videotape until May 1992. In the post-coup period, I found that many Russians were more open to speaking with me, than back in the spring of 1991 when I first began the project. It was in November 1991, when I finally convinced Marina Oswald’s uncle, retired MVD Colonel Ilya Prusakov to allow me through his door. Although he refused to be interviewed on videotape, I spent an afternoon with him discussing his MVD career, his impression of Oswald and the chain-of-events. He was a gracious man, a veteran of the Second World War with a classic officers bearing. Shortly after my meeting with him, he passed away. I never got a chance to record a videotaped interview with him and I remain the only Westerner to have interviewed him about Oswald.
It was during this period also that I discovered numerous artifacts left behind from Oswald’s sojourn in Minsk. I located and heard audio tapes of Oswald recorded in Minsk by his friend Ernst Titovetz. I also found a series of letters that Marina sent from the US to the USSR in 1962 and 1963 that contain descriptions of events back in Fort Worth, New Orleans, and Dallas — fixed and frozen as if in a time capsule — untouched by the post-assassination events which unfolded later. (And no doubt subject to CIA HT/LINGUAL intercepts.) There were many photographs, although none of Oswald that I had not seen before, and sad small artifacts left behind by Oswald — books, a ceramic statue kept to this day by a woman he dated and the remains of the rotting wooden flower boxes on the balcony of his apartment, hammered together by him during his first spring in the USSR.
Most of the interviews took place in Russian. Almost every witness was videotaped for three or four sessions. I would attempt to first interview the witness without exposing them to any Kennedy assassination material or evidence, including even letters written by the witnesses themselves. This was not always possible, however, as some had followed the history of the assassination and read American materials translated into Russian over the years. In the second session, in order to jog their memory, I would give the witnesses an opportunity to view primary sources, such as Oswald’s diary, photographs, letters, and other documents. In a final third session, I would expose the witnesses to some of the Kennedy assassination literature, to see if anything there might further jog their memory or give some kind of new context to the events they may recall.
I did not have then, nor do I have now, any theory. I came simply to collect information upon which I hope to some day base a conclusion. I did, however, in my questioning, probe in the various directions that some conspiracy theories proposed, such as the possibility of Oswald being an intelligence agent for either the US or USSR, his possible contacts with Cubans in Minsk, that he might have been brainwashed, trained, and even the possibility that there were more than one Oswald, that Marina Oswald might have been a KGB agent, or that Oswald was sent to specifically marry a Russian female, and even that he was the shooter exactly as the Warren Commission concluded.
Upon returning from Russia, I published a preliminary report of my research in The Third Decade (Vol. 8 # 4 May 1992 pp. 30-35.) When asked, I also shared my material with researchers: David Lifton, John Newman, Larry Schiller & Norman Mailer, Ray & Mary La Fontaine, Jane Rusconi, A.J. Weberman, the producers of PBS’s Frontline, and Documentary Associates in Toronto, and others. But I take no responsibility for what they have done with it or how they chose to interpret my data.
As far as conclusions go, I disagree with everybody. And I mean everybody – from Warren to Stone. Nobody has yet, to my satisfaction, introduced a single credible, sustainable scenario explaining the events that unfolded in Dealey Plaza the day JFK was assassinated–paradoxically one of the most witnessed crimes in history. The key to the mystery remains buried with Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy. I chose to look into a small part of his life– just to see what is there out of personal curiosity and in the knowledge that nobody had been there before me. This website is the result.
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Copyright © Peter Wronski 1991-2004
History of Constables and Policing in Pioneer York Toronto
POLICE IN YORK TOWN (TORONTO ONTARIO) UPPER CANADA 1793 – 1834
Toronto as it appeared in the autumn of 1803
Illustration by Edward Walsh, surgeon, 49th Regiment
The early court records of York Town, later to become Toronto, were destroyed by a flood of water from a broken pipe during the 1930s. One of the few sources we have as to what they might have contained is a study based on some of those records prior to their destruction by a Toronto magistrate, James Edmund Jones, published in 1924.
According to Jones, Upper Canada authorities were having problems in compelling their citizens to function as Constables to the extent that they were imprisoning violators:
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In 1812, Uriah W. Bennett was found guilty by a jury of contempt of court in “refusing office of Petty Constable” and was fined £5 and costs, and imprisoned till paid.
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In 1813, Thomas Cooper escaped being guilty of contempt on a plea that he was under age for a constable, but two others were indicted for neglect and contempt of Court.
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In 1815 James McClure, a constable for the town, “begged the Court to be allowed to pay a fine for not serving as constable, he having taken a contract that would interfere.” He was fined £2, but the Magistrates added, “This is not to be taken as a precedent in future.”
The situation became so desperate that in 1823 the Magistrates directed that every innkeeper throughout Upper Canada be appointed a constable. This regulation remained in force in rural Ontario until 1887.
In 1826, the first police office was opened in Toronto, with limited office hours of 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., except Sunday, Christmas Day and Good Friday. The number of constables in York called into service ranged from eleven in 1810, twenty in 1823, and down to twelve in 1830. The 1830 reduction in Toronto’s constabulary might have something to do with the rescinding that year of a daily honorarium of two shillings and six pence given to the men, which had no doubt previously softened the bite of constabulary conscription.
The number of constables is extraordinary in terms of a constable to population ratio. If we take the 1830 figure, after its reduction of constables, there is still a highly over-policed ratio of one constable for every 241 inhabitants. (Toronto’s population stood at 2,900 in 1830.) In 1823, with York’s population estimated at 1,500, the twenty constables would give a ratio of one for every 75 citizens. Much later in the mid-nineteenth century, the Toronto Police Board would argue that a ratio of one police officer for every 800 inhabitants was desired for the maintenance of order in Toronto and kept near to that figure in staffing the department. Today, by comparison, there is approximately one uniformed officer for every 475 Torontonians.
It is difficult to assess why there was such a high ratio of constables to inhabitants in York but it would have had to do with issues other than a high crime rate, the presence of which there is no evidence for. While there are no precise crime statistics for York itself, in Upper Canada overall between 1790-1835 there were a total of 1,106 criminal sentences handed down in Criminal Assizes, of which more than ten percent were death sentences (138.) (The population of Upper Canada was 60,000 in 1812.) But this high rate of capital punishment has more to do with the fact that the death penalty was the punishment for no less than 120 different crimes, then with a high rate of serious crime. (It would be only in 1833 when the death penalty was restricted to twelve offences, and 1841 finally to only murder and treason.) Furthermore, there were no penitentiaries in which to confine convicts for any extended period of time until Kingston opened its doors in 1830. The statistics therefore, do not suggest a particularly high rate of criminal offenses. A study by John Beattie at Toronto’s Center of Criminology also confirms this and in addition, finds that there was no perception of a threat from crime either. Later in this study, we will further explore the issue of crime and policing in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
One has to also bear in mind that the relationship between crime and the police was not as direct as it is today, especially in the non-urbanized Upper Canada. The police were not ostensibly “crime-fighters.” Constables served various civic functions such as enforcement of produce and meat market regulations, livestock and animal control, tavern licensing, regulation of carters, health and fire safety. They would have served the surrounding country as well. Furthermore, they were not trained or full time professionals and as they were conscripted, the authorities, as bureaucracies do whenever they can, perhaps over staffed the strength of the York constabulary.
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HISTORY OF THE TORONTO POLICE PART 1: 1834 – 1860
“Formidable Engines of Oppression”
In 1834, when Toronto was incorporated officially as a city, most Torontonians lived and worked between the Don River on the east, and Bathurst Street on the west. The lake was a closer to the city—the shoreline was where the Esplanade is today and Queen Street on the north, was roughly where Toronto ended. The population of Toronto at its founding was 9,200, and there were 78 licensed taverns, about 1 per every 120 men, women, and children residing in Toronto. In other words, the city had not yet earned its reputation as the puritan and sober, “Toronto the Good.”
King Street looking West from Jarvis circa 1845 — oil painting by John Gillespie
Although Toronto was ostensibly racially homogeneous, composed of a common English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, its population was nonetheless divided along class, religious and ultimately ethnic lines. Power and politics in colonial Upper Canada, was dominated by a mostly English elite, consisting of representatives of the Crown, government officials and clerks, doctors, architects, bankers, financial officers, teachers, military officers and engineers. Almost all the powerful English were Anglicans. Where one prayed, often reflected how one earned his income. The men who met each other in the boardrooms of the Bank of Upper Canada, tended to worship together at the Church of St. James on the corners of Church and King Streets.
In the simplified model of Toronto’s ethnic composition, the Scottish come next, often representing leading merchants, future manufactures, and publishers—the middle classes of varying wealth
It was the flood of Irish immigrants that was going to put a crack in the placid Toronto status quo. The Irish arrived bitterly divided amongst themselves into Protestant and Catholic camps—and that was before the potato blight made its contribution to the divisions and spilled millions of rural Irish immigrants into the cities of North America.
Added to this volatile mixture in Toronto, would be the figure of the Orange Irish constable.
When it was first incorporated in 1834, the City of Toronto, referred to back then as “the Corporation”, was run as a small oligarchy of local politicians—the Family Compact. It was like a ‘city-state’ within the confines of Upper Canada, almost in the Italian Renaissance-era tradition. The Mayor and Toronto Aldermen, held the positions of Magistrates along with their elected office and commanded the absolute personal loyalty of the Toronto Police. In 1841, a Provincial Commission of Inquiry into politics in Toronto, would report:
We have carefully perused the enactments under which the City of Toronto was originally incorporated… and we find the power thereby conferred on the Civil Magistrates, the very use of which by men of any class, party, or persuasion, could hardly be other than an abuse. The Corporation combines within itself, Legislative, Judicial and Executive functions. It appoints its own officers, remunerates them at discretion, and discharges them at will. It makes its own by-laws, enforces the same by its own Police, and executes them through its own tribunals… In all these cases, the City Police or the City Officers appear to be so closely identified with the Magistrates on the Bench, and the whole machinery of justice so completely monopolized in the same hands, that it would be impossible for the most immaculate body of men in the capacity of Magistrates, to avoid imputations engendered by the doubts, the cavils, and the want of confidence which such a system must infallibly entail.
Toronto City Council retained for itself the formidable power to hire Toronto police officers. Each Alderman had the right to appoint a number of constables in his ward, resulting in a police force hired entirely through a system of political favours. The Toronto police force was partisan, corrupt, and inept. There were no standards of recruitment and no training, and even though uniforms were first issued in 1837, one contemporary recalled that the Toronto Police was “without uniformity, except in one respect—they were uniformly slovenly.”
On March 9, 1835, Toronto retained five fulltime constables—a ratio of about one officer for every 1,850 citizens. Their daily pay was set at 5 shillings for day duty and 7 shillings, 6 pence for night duty—a substantial raise to the 2/6 paid previously to constable conscripts. Constables were appointed for a duration of one year, coinciding with the term of office of the alderman nominating them. The constables’ annual pay was fixed at £75 per annum in 1837, a lucrative City position when compared to the Toronto Mayor’s annual pay of £250.
In 1837 there was a rebellion in Toronto led by the city’s former mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie. There are no historical records that reveal what role the Toronto Police played in the suppression of the rebellion which was confronted by the militia while Toronto’s garrison was dealing with events in Kingston. Nonetheless, it is one of those historical paradoxes, that while the rebellion has been unfairly and so far universally dismissed by historians as a farcical comedic opera, its effect would resonate on politics and Toronto police policy for more than a decade to come. It would position the Toronto Police as a touchstone of the struggle between the Provincial-Municipal jurisdictions over the security within the confines of Toronto.
The nature of this jurisdictional conflict became quickly visible when in October 1838, a force of 500 rebels with American supporters launched an incursion into Upper Canada at the Detroit-Windsor frontier. The Lieutenant Governor, speaking for the Province, asked the Mayor to convey a message to Toronto’s City Council that there was “an imminent danger of an immediate invasion of this Province and an attack upon this City by the Rebels and Pirates”. The Mayor told the Council:
I am commanded by His Excellency the Lt Governor to communicate to you that in consequence of information of a conspiracy to invade this Province entered into by a numerous body of foreign Brigands, His Excellency had thought it right to take immediate steps for the protection of the City in anticipation of the employment and organization of an adequate Militia force.
Toronto’s Aldermen rejected any Provincial role in organizing its citizens for the defense of Toronto, and responded to the Province:
In the opinion of this Council the most effective mode of seconding the views of the Provincial Government in protecting the city from the consequences of any attack which may be apprehended from the foreign Brigands alluded to in the Communications from His Excellency the Lt Gov to the Mayor yesterday date, will be to increase the strength of the Police force of this City and that therefore ten extra police Constables be forthwith appointed by this Council and that the City Magistrates immediately prepare a code of instructions for the government and guidance of said Police force.
With a kind of one-upmanship, the Province responded to the City directly, offering to pay for an additional twelve constables in Toronto, but not without first pointing out the inadequacies of the Toronto Police, and advising the City that the Province via the Lieutenant Governor should approve the new constables:
The Council [Provincial Executive] are fully aware of the necessity which exists for an augmentation of the Police for the City, which at present appears inadequate as well for the purpose of discovering and defeating the machinations of the enemy without the active intervention of the Military…
The Council therefore respectfully recommend to your Excellency to communicate to the Mayor of Toronto that should the City Council think fit to appoint twelve additional Constables, to be employed for such period as Your Excellency may deem necessary, Your Excellency will engage that the necessary increased expenditure will be defrayed by the Government.
The Council would feel pleased if the City Council previous to making the appointments finally would communicate the names of the proposed constables for your Excellency’s approval.
Toronto’s cagey alderman did not take long to both accept the offer while at the same time bristling at and rejecting the Province’s attempt to regulate the appointment of the constables. Toronto City Council:
Resolved that this Council relying with every confidence upon the exertions of the Government to protect the public peace and ensure the safety of this Province are induced to believe that it is necessary that this City should be furnished with a Police force greater than in ordinary times would be required.
The Council heartily approve of the prompt manner in which the Government have offered to defray the expenses of twelve additional Constables, but relying as they do upon the zeal of the Mayor and Alderman of the City under any circumstances, while on the one hand they express their thanks to the Government for their liberal offer of Twelve additional Constables, which they accept, they conceive that any change in the present system of Police regulations which would interfere with the duties of the Mayor and Aldermen would be inexpedient as well as an infringement of the Act of Incorporation.
The Rebellion of 1837 and the subsequent incursion at Windsor in 1838, would transform the Toronto City Police into a strategic objective in the struggle between the Province and the Municipality. Any “infringement of the Act of Incorporation” by the Province was to be staunchly beaten back by the City for decades. Furthermore, the Rebellion gave a context to the Toronto Police as a defensive force against rebellious external enemies. Later, as we shall see, this function would be refocused towards what were to be perceived as potentially rebellious forces from within the community. Crime fighting itself, was low on the agenda of perceived functions for the Toronto police.
Two principle political factions fought for power in Toronto during this time: the Tories, who represented the entrenched old establishment, and the Reformers, who represented the rising new middle class establishment. Making things more complicated, was the growing presence of a powerful secret society in Toronto: the Orange Order, an ultra-Protestant movement born in the conquest of Ireland and the ensuing conflict between Catholic and Protestant there. Its pro-England, proud trinity of crown, empire, and Protestantism, provided its members an ideological tradition that was reformulated in the context of local Toronto issues.
There were at least twenty-six riots in Toronto between 1839 and 1860. Almost all of these riots involved the Orange Order in some manner. The Toronto Police constables, of which at least half were members of the Order, and all of whom were appointed by mainly Orange supported politicians, would act in not only in favour of the Orange factions in these riots, but sometimes participated in the riots as offenders as well.
Making matters worse, incumbent Tory politicians were routinely using the Toronto Police as a private army to suppress their opposition Reform candidates. In October 1839, Toronto constables were marshaled to break up a Reformist meeting at ‘Davis’s Temperance Tavern.’ In December 1840, the Reformist paper Examiner trumpeted, “The reign of the present corporation is emphatically one of terror.” A meeting of a Reformer candidate and supporters at a tavern on Yonge Street was cancelled when Toronto constables, reinforced with “specials” armed with clubs, occupied the tavern and dispersed the meeting. In the following years, numerous legal political meetings and Reformer rallies were violently broken up by the Toronto Police, on orders from incumbent Aldermen. Toronto Police constables would be personally transported in wagons by Tory aldermen at the reins, and set loose to attack Reform candidate meetings. The incumbent aldermen had personally nominated each of those Toronto constables to his post.
It was in March 1841, when election violence in Toronto would finally spark a Provincial inquiry into the City and its police. At that time, the Mayor and Chief Magistrate of Toronto was George Monro, a wholesaler, a Tory pew holder at St. James Cathedral, a director in several banks in Upper Canada, and a member of the Orange Order. When Provincial elections were declared, Monro and a compatriot, Henry Sherwood, ran on a Tory ticket for the Toronto seats in the new Parliament. The weight of the Orange Order and the Corporation city machinery was thrown in behind their campaign. To everyone’s surprise however, they lost to the Reform ticket of Dunn and Buchanan.
The day after the election, the Dunn-Buchanan faction decided to stage a victory parade down Church Street, and past the defeated Mayor Monro’s offices in the City Hall which stood on King Street near Church at the time. Near the corner of Church and King, was the Coleraine Tavern, which during the election was kept as an ‘open house’ for Monro’s faction. Several Orange Order Lodges also held their weekly meetings in the Coleraine. Witnesses testifying before the Provincial Commission stated that they saw a group of strangers armed with knives, sticks, and various firearms going in and out of the tavern on the morning of the parade. The investigation later identified these men as members of the Orange Order in Scarborough, brought over in a wagon that morning by the owner of the tavern under the instructions of Samuel Sherwood, Henry’s brother. (We will encounter Samuel again shortly.)
All this was occurring some eighty yards away from Mayor Monro’s office. Several witnesses testified that they ran to Monro asking him to send some constables to the parade route, and for him to go to the Coleraine and calm his supporters down. Monro refused and kept twelve of the twenty special constables hired that day, positioned inside the City Hall. The remaining eight were not to be seen anywhere.
As the parade began to make its way past the Coleraine Tavern it was attacked by rocks and bottles thrown by Monro supporters from inside. Eventually the parade halted and began to threaten to attack the tavern. At that point, a shot was fired from a tavern window, and one of the Dunn-Buchanan supporters was killed. Troops were called out to restore order while the murderer was never identified and the Toronto Police remained conspicuously absent. Charles Dickens who was visiting Toronto during this period later wrote of the events:
One man was killed on the same occasion and from the very window whence he received his death, the very flag which shielded his murderer (not only in the commission of his crime, but from its consequences), was displayed again on the occasion of the public ceremony performed by the Governor General, to which I have just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is but one which could be so employed: I need not say that the flag was orange.
In their report later that year, the Provincial Commission investigating the events and the administration of Toronto began by highly criticizing the efficiency in general of the Toronto Police:
The City of Toronto possesses no Night Watch. The necessity for such an institution is obvious. Within the last 3 weeks, one burglary and robbery to the amount of 1000 pounds has been committed. This burglary was effected in a house immediately opposite to the Police Office, and an iron chest containing the money, removed without observation or subsequent detection.
In defense of the Corporation, Charles Daly, the Clerk of the Peace, responded to the accusations. He proceeded to point out that fighting crime was not the main function of the Toronto Police:
It is not their duty as Constables to detect infractions of the Provincial or Civic Laws, or to lay information on breaches of the same. If they witnessed any such infraction, they would be duty bound to mention it to the Magistrates. There is no summary punishment under the Law for resisting the Police in the execution of their duty. There is no Night Watch beyond the two Police Constables on duty during the night. They are appointed by the Corporation and removed by the same body at pleasure. I consider the present Police force adequate for the daily protection and peace of the City; but as far as the prevention of crime and security of property is concerned, I think it be increased with advantage at night. If the increase is made at all to be effective, it must be extensive. I doubt if the increase would be agreeable to the citizens or if they would consider it repaid by the security conferred.
The Provincial Commissioners focused on the system where city aldermen appointed police constables in Toronto. In view of massive testimony about Toronto Police constables attacking opposition party events and workers, and their conspicuous absence during the violence at the Coleraine Tavern, the Inquiry concluded:
It is evident that a force thus constituted must be liable, in times of political excitement, to be employed as political instruments in behalf of those to whom the Corporation or a majority of the Corporation may be friendly. The authority legally invested in these men, their habitual intercourse with the lower classes, the impression that they possess the ear of their employers, the favouritism they may be enabled to suggest, the petty and indirect tyranny they may be permitted to exercise, all combine to degrade a force of this nature into formidable engines of oppression.
The Commission further focused on a method of coercion more subtle than the policeman’s baton: liquor licensing. By the time of the 1841 Inquiry, the number of taverns in Toronto licensed to sell liquor or beer was 140; one tavern for every fifty-two Torontonians over the age of sixteen. The administration of liquor licensing was one of the duties of the Toronto Police. Those tavern owners, who did not cooperate with the Tory politicians, soon found that their liquor licenses were not renewed upon expiry. Mixed into this formula, were also all the ‘beer dispensing’ licenses, and unlicensed facilities, which the constables would see fit to handle at their “discretion.” Making matters even worse, some liquor licenses were held by constables themselves.
Numerous witnesses testified how their establishments were denied liquor licenses or had their licenses revoked when they failed to support the Tory party. The Inquiry concluded:
The power of licensing or rather of deciding upon the qualifications of applicants for licenses–a power in the discreet and uncompromising exercise of which so much of public morality and good order depends, will and must be inevitably abused if entrusted, to the caprice of an elective Magistracy. It will be prostituted to seduce the wavering, to reward the compliant, to punish the refractory. The influence exercised by Tavernkeepers at public elections, is notorious, and we feel that the means which the existing Corporation have employed for securing or coercing this influence are sufficient to justify the preceding observations.
Toronto’s taverns were the central focus of vote gathering power. Dispensing intoxicants and gathering together a consensus, a tavern in 19th century Toronto, was as powerful a political tool, as television is today. It is for this reason, that the Reform movement took an anti-alcohol stance in its early political platform. By breaking the tavern-based vote-focusing machinery of the Tories, the Reform movement hoped to seize power for itself in future elections. However, once the Reformers aligned themselves with the religious Temperance movement in their bid for power, they found themselves permanently locked into an anti-alcohol platform on moral grounds, rather than political or strategic. It is in these events, that we find the roots of today’s stringent liquor laws in Ontario and the foundation of the future puritanical Toronto the Good.
View towards the “Coffin Block” at Front and Church Streets along the shoreline, circa 1845. (top) Building seen in sketch still surviving to be photographed in 1873. (above left)
Current “Flatiron Building” built in 1891 on the same site. (above right)
Finally, the Provincial Commission turned its attention to the Orange Order in its Report:
The officers of the Corporation and the Police, are for the most part open and avowed Orangemen. Orangeism has become the watchword and symbol of the party which supports the Corporation, and the most efficient if not the indespensable recommendation to civic favour or employ.
At the late Election, Orangeism was the Shibboleth of the Corporation party. At the riots which ensued, Orangemen systematically brought into the City from the surrounding country were the most conspicuous actors…
We cannot, therefore, conclude this Report, without expressing our earnest conviction, that the existence of Orangeism in this Province, is a great and growing evil, which should be discountenanced, denounced, and repressed, by the exercise of every authority and influence at the disposal of the Government.
After the report was published, Ontario quickly introduced legislation attempting to suppress the power of the Orange Order and regulate electoral conduct. During elections the exhibiting of party flags and colours was outlawed, as was election bribery and the carrying of firearms. In 1843 the Parliament further introduced the Party Processions Act and the Secret Societies Act, which was aimed at suppressing the Orange Order. (The latter was disallowed by Britain as the Act failed to distinguish the Orange Order from another even more influential but less vitriolic secret society, the Order of Free and Accepted Masons.) But there was nobody to enforce these Acts. Certainly not the Toronto Police, for as Charles Daly testified above, it was “not their duty as Constables to detect infractions of the Provincial or Civic Laws, or to lay information on breaches of the same.”
In 1843 City Council increased Toronto’s police strength to eight permanent constables. Two stations were established where a constable was kept on duty from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next morning. The other constables patrolled in nine hour shifts but no night watch was introduced.
The specter of the 1837 Rebellion reappeared again in Toronto in 1849 with the introduction of the Rebellion Losses Bill and the return to the city of William Lyon Mackenzie. Rioting ensued and the homes of prominent Reformers were attacked, although the mobs stopped short of burning them down. (In Montreal the Parliament building were set on fire.) Once again, the Toronto Police were conspicuously absent while at least two Tory Aldermen led the rioters. Mayor George Gurnett eventually called out the troops to restore order, for which he would be severely criticized by the Toronto City Council.
In 1849 it was approaching ten years since the Election Commission Report, but little was done to remedy the relationship between Toronto’s aldermen and the city’s police constables. The Provincial government was moving very gradually in dismantling Toronto’s city-state administration. In 1849 it introduced the New Municipal Corporations Act, which placed Toronto’s local criminal judiciary—the Police Magistrate’s Court—under the control and pay of the Province. But the Province timidly appointed Toronto’s Mayor, George Gurnett to that position.
Whatever the Province’s ambitions, the fact remained that Toronto was a key source of electoral power in the Provincial Parliament and throughout the 1840s and most of 1850s, Toronto elected Tory, not Reform candidates to the Legislative Assembly. The Province hesitated to force reform on the Toronto Police system, despite the continual abuses. In 1852, matters only became worse: the City appointed Samuel Sherwood as Chief of Police. Samuel was the brother of Henry Sherwood, whose defeat along with Monro had sparked the 1841 election riot. Samuel Sherwood had been implicated during the Provincial inquiry in the organizing of the armed group inside the Coleraine Tavern which opened fire on the passing victory parade. Now in 1852 Sherwood was rewarded with the position of Police Chief of Toronto, an appointment he would hold until 1859.
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MONDO MOSCOW
MONDO MOSCOW BY PETER VRONSKY (1992) TRAILER
In the last winter of the collapsing Soviet regime in Russia in 1990-1991, filmmaker Peter Vronsky seeks out the turbulent intelligentsia of Moscow: painters, poets, newspaper editors, journalists, art collectors, filmmakers, a mad architect, corporate opportunists and a lunatic fringe of neo-fascists. All are haunted by the ubiquitous presence of Joseph Stalin even though the notorious dictator had died forty years earlier in 1953. Mondo Moscow is a secret journey deep into Moscow’s hidden underground culture in a Russia at the brink of cultural and political collapse.
Guided by some of Moscow’s most controversial thinkers at the time, Mondo Moscow explores off-beat corners of the city, some forbidden to outsiders even today. From the rooftops of the Stalin ‘Ghost Busters’ skyscrapers to the suburban house where the dictator died in 1953, still shut and guarded by special security, Mondo Moscow takes the viewer on a voyage through hidden Moscow. The film uncovers a mass grave in the middle of a new construction project in the center of Moscow, hidden Masonic interiors and tombs, and penetrates an assortment of guarded and gated ‘forbidden’ zones in the city. From Red Army colonels “gobbling down Big Macs” to the rantings of a mad architect convinced of the existence of ‘mind control’ machines on the rooftops of Stalin skyscrapers, Mondo Moscow is an unconventional look at new Russian culture from the inside.
The film features painter Eric Bulatov, author Alexander Kabakov, editor of Moscow News and former advisor to Gorbachev Len Karpinsky, journalist Dimitry Radishevsky, screenwriter Sasha Mindadze, poet Vsevolod Nekrassov, art historian Teodor Tezhik, architect Liosha Tiegan and many other vanguard artists, thinkers and members of the lunatic fringe.
The background sound track was composed by the Cowboy Junkies’ Ken Myhr with the title and end songs written and performed by Russia’s leading former underground musician, Boris Grebenshikov of Aquarium.
The Toronto Star described Mondo Moscow as “A weird rock’n’roll journey into the subtext of Russia’s new emerging culture.”
MONDO MOSCOW ITALY CANADA COPRODUCTION TVO – PROFESSIONAL VIDEO – AN OCEAN CORPORATION PRODUCTION with the participation of the ONTARIO FILM DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION produced by PETER VRONSKY russia coproducer INNA KRYMOVA italy coproducer SERGIO PASTRELLO coproducer JOANNE MUROFF SMALE director of photography TONY WANNAMAKER csc editor CAROLINE CHRISTIE post-production design PETER LYNCH music KEN MYHR sound VOLODIA KOZLOV title song performed by BORIS GREBENSHIKOV written and directed by PETER VRONSKY
DVD FULL-SCREEN 90 MINUTES NTSC COPYRIGHT1991 OCEAN CORPORATION 
MONDO MOSCOW
THE ART AND MAGIC OF NOT BEING THERE
crashNburn Crash and Burn Crash'n'Burn crash'n'burn
CRASH’N’BURN [DADA’S BOYS]
Director and Producer: Peter WronskiEditor and Co-Producer: Robert SchroderCinematography: Joe Sutherland and Peter Wronski
Audio: Peter Chapman and Yasmin Karim
Shot on location at the New Yorker Theater and Crash’N’Burn Club, Toronto, and CBGB and Times Square Motor Inn, New York City, June-July 1977. Twenty minute version broadcast on the CBC in September 1977 with disputed narration inserted and performances by The Ramones, The Dead Boys, and The Curse edited out by CBC management. Original version currently under restoration.
HST 603 Course Outline
Ryerson University
Department of History
HST 603: History of The Third Reich
(Winter Session 2009)
Section 01 Mon: 11:00AM – 1:00PM (EPH441) & Wed: 9:00 – 10:00AM (KHS251)
Section 02 Wed: 11:00AM – 1:00PM (EPH441) & Fri: 2:00 – 3:00 PM (EPH441)
Instructor: Peter Wronski
Office Hours: Weds: 10:00-11:00 AM or by appointment – JOR 501
Email : pwronsky@ryerson.ca
Phone : 979-5000 ext. 6058
Course website: www.petervronsky.com/thirdreich.htm OR
www.russianbooks.org/thirdreich.htm
COURSE DESCRIPTION / OBJECTIVE
More than sixty years after its destruction by the Allied armies, Hitler’s Germany still manages to arouse both controversy and curiosity. Was the Nazi state rooted in the German past, or rather the product of modern crises that could overwhelm any nation? This course combines a chronological, biographical and thematic approach to explaining the history of the Third Reich. The course covers Germany’s historical roots leading to the emergence of the National Socialist Party, the rise of Hitler and his henchmen to power, the rise and fall of the Third Reich’s totalitarian-racial police state and Nazi criminality in warfare, occupation policy and genocide. The objectives of this course are: 1. To examine the Third Reich in its contemporary setting and to establish a factual framework for its history; 2. To understand the relationship between National Socialism and the conduct of foreign and domestic policy; 3. To improve your ability to think critically and to analyze data by undertaking the kind of research required for an upper level university essay or a professional or academic report or publication and to write and present it clearly and effectively.
(Upper-level liberal studies elective)
WARNING: Lectures may feature graphic images that some may find disturbing.
TEXTS (available at the Ryerson book store)
Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History, (New York: Continuum, 1995.)
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.) [second edition]
METHOD OF STUDENT EVALUATION
Essay Proposal (250 words): 10%
Mid-Term Test: 10%
Essay (2500 words): 30%
Final Exam: 30%
Seminars: 20%
METHOD OF INSTRUCTION: Lecture & Seminar
TENTATIVE LECTURE SCHEDULE (see website for more lecture content)
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Introduction to History of the Third Reich
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Roots of the Third Reich
1871 – 1919
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Struggle for Power
1
920 – 1932
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Seizure of Power
1933 – 1934
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Consolidation of Power
1934 – 1939
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The Nazi Revolutionary State
1933 – 1936
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From Appeasement to Blitzkrieg
1936 – 1941
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Germany at Total War
1941 – 1943
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The Making of the Racial State
1933 – 1940
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The Final Solution
1941 – 1944
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Fall of the Third Reich
1944 – 1945
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Aftermath
1
945 – 2005
SEMINARS: Four one-hour seminars will be scheduled during the semester. Discussion will be based on lecture and assigned reading materials. Participation is mandatory and worth 20% of the final mark based on attendance and the quality and degree of your participation. Readings will consist of academic journal articles which you can access online through the Ryerson Library internet portal. See website for instruction how to access academic journal titles online.
ESSAY ASSIGNMENTS
There are two parts to the essay assignment: the outline and the essay. The outline should consist of one double-spaced page with a description of your proposed essay, an argument if you have one and/or your approach to the subject and its significance to the course if not immediately evident. (Approximately 250 words.)
A one or two page annotated bibliography of six sources at least should accompany the essay description. This should consist of the author, title, publisher, city, and year of publication of the book, journal article, or other source and a short commentary on what the source offers to your essay. Outlines submitted with no annotations to the bibliography will be heavily penalized. Sources should be current academic monographs or academic journal articles — not popular works like Time-Life Books, Complete Idiot’s or Dummies Guides, Colliers Children’s Encyclopedia, Encarta, Wikipedia, Historyplace.com, etc. Journalistic works with citations are acceptable. In general, if your source does not provide detailed references in the form of footnotes, endnotes or specific page references, it is unsuitable as a source. If you intend to include websites, provide their URLs in the proposal for approval.
You will be assessed on the uniqueness of your topic and on the depth, currency and academic quality of your sources. The use of academic journal articles, many of which are available online through the Ryerson Library is highly encouraged. If you are not familiar with academic article databases like JSTOR and Project Muse, go (run!) immediately to a librarian at the Ryerson Library and ask them to show you how to use these databases. You can access them from home and many (but not all) articles are available for downloading in full text. A link on the course website also provides you an introduction as to how to enter the online journal interface.
You may at any time after submitting a proposal, change your approach, your sources, and even completely change your essay topic without submitting a new proposal but I strongly suggest to check with me first on topic changes. Part 2: The Essay (30%)
Essays should be 2,500 words in length (approximately 10-12 pages not including your title page and bibliography and appendix if any.) Standard 12 pt font, cursive or non-cursive, double spaced text, standard 2.5 cm margins, 11” X 8 ½” paper. Pages must be stapled (no binders or paperclips), paginated, and submitted with a cover page containing no art or decorative elements. The cover page must have: your name, student number, course number, section number and essay title. Essays not conforming to these standards will not be accepted and late penalties will be imposed until the essay is resubmitted in the required format.
Essays must be based on a minimum of six sources (not including course texts but seminar readings are acceptable), and should not include, encyclopedias, textbooks, or general or popular histories, or unapproved websites, (2 marks deducted for every Wikipedia or like citation) etc., as described above in Part 1.
Paragraphs are to be indented without any additional spaces between paragraphs, unlike in this course outline, for example. Any relevant images, maps, graphs included in the essay are to be placed into an Appendix at the back.
The essay should have a single descriptive title or a creative title with a descriptive subtitle. For example: Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders or The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution, etc. “History Essay” is not a title. Marks will be deducted for essays submitted without a title and/or title page.
Any paper not conforming to the above standards will be heavily penalized.
Citations
A history essay is like a courtroom argument—it is based on the presentation of evidence conforming to rules of evidence in an expositive argument. The way hearsay is not admissible in court, Wikipedia for example, is likewise not admissible as evidence in historical discourse. Just as court evidence is presented in a disciplined system: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, etc, in the historical argument, the Chicago Style footnoted citation is used to lead and guide the reader through the evidence behind the persuasive discourse of the text above.
Some of the journal readings for seminars will have been pointed out to you as appropriate models for the citation style required for your essay.
Essays must have a bibliography and have footnoted citations in the Chicago style (at the bottom of the page). Parenthetic in-text or inline style citations are unacceptable for a history essay. A well researched essay integrating multiple sources into its argument contains on average five to six citations per page — approximately 50 to 70 citations per essay.
As a general rule, references should be given for direct quotations, summaries or your own paraphrases of other people’s work or points of view, and for material that is factual, statistical, controversial, assertive or obscure. You must cite more than just direct quotes. WHEN IN DOUBT, IT IS BETTER TO PROVIDE A REFERENCE. You do not need to cite items of general knowledge like, for example: the sun rises in the east or Elizabeth II is the Queen of England.
Essays that do not provide specific page references in each citation will be automatically failed without an opportunity to resubmit. Go to these links for a guide to the required citation format: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c10_s1.html
http://www.douglascollege.ca/library/chicago.html
Why Chicago Style Footnotes?
http://www.yale.edu/bass/writing/sources/kinds/principles/why.html
This is an example of the basic required style for citations which are to be inserted at the bottom of each page:
1 Jane Doe, The ABC’s of History (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997), pp. 20-21
2 Jane Doe, p. 23
It is not necessary to use archaic terms like ibid or op cit. and their use is even discouraged as word processing drag or cut-and-paste editing can easily displace the logic of these citation terms. An author’s surname and page number is acceptable for subsequent citations once you have introduced all the relevant reference information in the first citation to that particular source. If you are citing more than one work by the same author, then include the title as well. Titles are to be put into italics or underlined. See the above webpages for further details and formats as to how to cite journals, multiple authors, collections, etc. or search “Chicago style footnotes” on Google. To create numerically sequential footnotes in MS WORD 2007 go to the “References” ribbon and select [Insert Footnote]; in earlier version of MS WORD, go to the “Insert” menu and then select [Footnote] item.
Footnotes may optionally on occasion contain additional relevant short comments on the cited source but in general this practice is discouraged.
Bibliographies
Essays MUST provide alphabetically ordered by author’s surname, bibliographies of all works consulted, whether or not they have been quoted directly. An adequate bibliography for this assignment will contain no less than six books or journal articles related to the topic. General books, dictionaries, atlases, textbooks and/or encyclopedias DO NOT count towards this minimum number of sources, and their inclusion in citations will NOT be considered as constituting research. Seminar readings are acceptable as citable sources.
An example of a bibliographic entry is as follows:
Smith, John. History of Canada (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997).
Submission of Essays
Essays are to be submitted to the instructor on the due date in lecture.
Electronic Submission of Essays
If you find it necessary to submit an essay by e-mail, the following file naming protocol is to be used:
“Last Name_First Name_CourseNumber_SectionNumber_Title”
Any attached file not using this exact naming protocol will not be accepted.
Only MS Word files (preferred) in .doc or .docx format or PDF files will be accepted.
The submission of files by e-mail will usually be acknowledged within two days. A hard copy of the essay is to be submitted at the next opportunity. Indicate on the front of the hardcopy the date you had e-mailed the essay to me previously. The e-mailed essay will secure your submission date. Obviously the hard copy is to be exactly identical with the e-mailed copy. Hard copies of previously e-mailed essays not indicating the e-mail date on the cover will be assigned the date of the submission of the hard copy with no appeal accepted.
Hardcopy Submission of Essays
Do not slip essays under my door or into my mail-box. Hard copies may be submitted to the Essay Drop Off Box in the History Department (JOR500).
I will guarantee essay returns with comments by the day of the exam only to those essays submitted to me on the due date, in hard copy, in required format, in lecture. All other essays will be marked after the exam and arrangements may be made to get your essay mark by e-mail after the final marks have been submitted.
Late Penalties and Extensions
Extensions may be granted on medical or compassionate grounds but will be automatically penalized three (3) marks regardless. Students requesting an extension should submit an e-mailed request to me before the deadline specifying precisely the date to which they are requesting the extension. After the due date, students need to provide appropriate documentation relating to the extension request (i.e. doctor’s note, death certificate of relative, police report on their stolen laptop, repair bills for their crashed hard disc, veterinary reports on the contents of Fluffy ’s stomach, etc). Essays submitted under an extension must have my written response to the extension request attached to the front of the essay. E-mailed submissions are to be attached as a ‘reply’ to my earlier response to the extension request. Submissions without my extension approval attached to their front will be penalized as late with no opportunity of appeal afterward. No late work will be accepted after the last day of lecture or extensions granted beyond the last lecture day.
Two (2) marks per/day are deducted from your essay mark for late submissions, weekends included, until the day the essay is submitted to me. If I do not acknowledge the receipt of your e-mailed essay within a few days, it is your responsibility to ensure I have received it. Keep copies of all work, including marked assignments returned to you and e-mails of your submissions until your final course mark is released. Re-submissions of earlier e-mailed essays “lost” in transmission, should such an unlikely scenario occur, will only be accepted in the form of a forwarded copy of the original e-mail. There are no exceptions to this. Outstanding assignments will not be accepted after the last day of lecture.
Earning Marks
The evaluation of your research, content, evidence, originality and argumentation is of primary concern in marking as is the quality of your sources as described above. Equally important is the syntax, style and structure of your work. Marks will be deducted from work containing excessive grammatical/spelling mistakes, typographical errors, work that is excessively long or inadequately short, or which fails to provide properly formatted footnoting/bibliography. Essays that consist of frequent long quoted passages or sentences, even if footnoted, will be severely penalized. Be selective in direct quotations. Ask yourself, “can this be said in my own words and then cited?” Is there a stylistic or argumentative reason for quoting the source directly? Be sure to edit and check your work carefully. Do not simply rely on your computer’s spelling or grammar checker.
Grounds for Assignment Failure
Essays which do not supply proper and adequate references and bibliographies as described above or submitted after the final day of lecture will be failed. Any written work that quotes directly from other material without attribution, or which paraphrases extensive tracts from the works of others, is plagiarized will be failed with no opportunity to submit and will result in additional severe academic consequences. Please consult the Ryerson academic calendar for further information on plagiarism. If you have any questions or doubts about how to cite material, please feel free to contact me.
Suggested Essay Themes
1. A biography of a lesser known Third Reich military figure, party functionary, politician, business figure, writer, journalist, or civilian, male or female, who might have made a contribution to the history of the Third Reich.
2. An exploration of a particular theme, policy, crucial moment or aspect in the biography of a more prominent figure. For example, Hess’s decision to fly to England, Speer’s appointment as Minister of War Production; the decision to implement the Final Solution; the decision to invade Russia. Do not attempt to write a complete biography of a major figure—pick a decisive moment in their life or a particular theme. Remember—you only have 10 pages!
3. A particular battle or campaign significant to the outcome of the war, to military tactics or to technologies. Explore the historical debates about a battle and the elements attributed to its outcome.
4. An exploration of a military technology and/or the individual designer behind it, a development in military management—logistics, medical care, prisoner-of-war policy, recruitment, transport, espionage, aerial surveillance, naval issues.
5. A look at a particular social, business, or political institution in the Third Reich—the Catholic Church, the Hitler Youth, Hitler Maidens, the SS, the Gestapo, the Reichsbank–again, you probably cannot write an essay on the whole history of the institution–address a particular policy or period or problem in the institution’s history.
6. A foreign policy issue or foreign relations with a particular country or a particular period or diplomatic figure, conference, crisis.
7. A look at cultural institutions of the period—music, art, theatre, literature, cinema.
8. A look at a service branch in the Third Reich: nursing, hospitals, orphanages, social policy, policing, health care, communications, railways, banks. How did they impact the conduct of the war? What effect did the war have on them? How did National Socialist ideology shape these institutions in a unique way?
9. The role of a professional class in the Third Reich: doctors, lawyers, journalists, scientists or a social class–workers, peasants, middle-classes, aristocracy.
10. A study of a war crimes trial, a particular crime or type of crime, a perpetrator–individual or institutional, legal aspects of the crime, the war crime trial process.
Grounds for Failure: The incompletion of the essay requirement or exam requirement will result in failure regardless of your standing in the completed requirements. Essays which do not supply proper and adequate citations indicating precise page references and bibliographies will be failed. Essays will not be accepted after the last day of lecture without prior arrangement. Any written work that quotes directly from other material without attribution, or which paraphrases extensive tracts from the works of others, is plagiarised. It will receive no marks and there will be no chance to resubmit. Please consult the Ryerson academic calendar for further information on plagiarism. If you have any questions or doubts about how to cite material, please feel free to contact me.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is a form of intellectual dishonesty in which someone attempts to claim the work of others as their own. Work which has been researched and/or written by others, such as an essay-writing agency, internet service, friend, or family member is NOT acceptable. The submission of such work is one form of plagiarism, and it will be dealt with accordingly as academic misconduct. Quoting directly or indirectly from research sources without proper attribution is also plagiarism, and it will also constitute an academic misconduct. The Faculty of Arts policy on plagiarism will be strictly enforced in this course; resulting in a grade of zero for the assignment, a report to the Registrar and the programme department of the student, and possibly other academic penalties. A second violation of the Code of Academic Conduct on a student’s record will result in a recommendation of suspension or expulsion.
For additional help, Ryerson now offers the Academic Integrity Website at http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/
This offers students a variety of resources to assist in their research, writing, and presentation of all kinds of assignments. It also details all dimensions of Academic Misconduct and how to avoid it. It was put together by a team representing the Vice President Academic, faculty, the library, Digital Media Projects, and Student Services.
The policy is available in its entirety at www.ryerson.ca/acadcouncil and at www.ryerson.ca/rr
and in the Student Guide.
Ryerson University is committed to promoting academic success and to ensuring that students’ academic records ultimately reflect their academic abilities and accomplishments. The University expects that academic judgments by its faculty will be fair, consistent and objective, and recognizes the need to grant academic consideration, where appropriate, in order to support students who face personal difficulties or events. It is also expected that students will deal with issues which may affect academic performance as soon as they arise. It should be understood that students can only receive grades which reflect their knowledge of the course material.
Students should refer to the Student Guide and to the Academic Council and Records and Registration web sites for detailed information on the various types of academic consideration that may be requested; necessary documents such as appeal forms, medical certificates and forms for religious accommodation; and procedural instructions. Information is also available from the Departments and Schools, Dean’s Offices and the Secretary of Academic Council.
Students are responsible for reviewing all pertinent information prior to the submission of a formal academic appeal. Incomplete appeals will not be accepted. Students are responsible for ensuring that a formal appeal is submitted by the deadline dates published in the calendar, and must adhere to the timelines established in the policy.
Important Resources available on campus Use the services of the University when you are having problems writing, editing or researching papers, or when you need help with course material:
o The Library (LIB 2nd floor) provides research workshops and individual assistance. Enquire at the Reference Desk or at www.ryerson.ca/library/info/workshops.html
o The Writing Centre (LIB 272- B) offers one-on-one tutorial help with writing and workshops www.ryerson.ca/writingcentre/workshops.htm
o Learning Success Centre (VIC B-15) offers individual sessions and workshops covering various aspects of researching, writing, and studying www.ryerson.ca/studentservices/learningsuccess/seminars/
o English Language Support (VIC B-17) offers workshops to improve overall communication skills www.ryerson.ca/studentservices/els/
Course Evaluation:
This coming year the Faculty Course Survey will be administered will be administered from Wednesday, March 18, 2009 to Tuesday, April 7, 2009.