- In November 1982, A 10 year old schoolgirl from Maine named Samantha wrote a letter to then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, seeking to understand why the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were so tense:
- Dear Mr. Andropov,
- My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren’t please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.
- Sincerely,
- Samantha Smith
- He wrote back, inviting her and her family to the USSR. They toured Moscow, Leningrad, Red Square and Samantha spent several days at the Soviet youth camp in the Crimea on The Black Sea.
- Olga and the girls in my room dressed me in an Artek uniform and tied my hair up with the white chiffon bows that the Soviet girls like to wear. Â I wore the blue-and-white visitor’s scarf because the red one is only for regular member
- The U.S. and Soviet media followed her every step and she became a worldwide celebrity, besieged by reporters everywhere she went; receiving toe shoes from a prima ballerina at the Kirov Ballet; in colorful Russian folk costume; accepting flowers from a soldier on the ship “Aurora”; laying a wreath at the Piskare skoye Memorial; at the Moscow Circus and Puppet Theatre. Her solemn opinions on nuclear proliferation and world peace were broadcast around the world, as she appeared on Nightline, Phil Donahue, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, etc. She was featured in publications as varied as People and US News and World Report. She was parodied via a Chicago Tribune cartoon and had her own Disney Channel special. In 1983, Samantha became America’s youngest goodwill ambassador
Samantha died on a rainy August night in 1985 when the commercial plane she and her father were in, crashed, killing everyone on board. She was 13.