I heard this story, but I almost didn’t remember it, it’s very touching in my opinion ...

Many who are now over 30 years old remember well this smiling girl - Samantha Smith. This American schoolgirl became famous throughout the world for writing a letter to the then leader of the USSR Andropov. It was in 1983, at the height of the Cold War.

The letter was this:
"Dear Mr. Andropov
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new appointment. I am very worried that a nuclear war will break out between the Soviet Union and the United States. Are you for war or not? If you are against, please tell me how you are going to prevent the war? Of course, you are not required to answer this question, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the whole world, or at least our country. The Lord created the earth so that we could all live in peace together and not fight.
Sincerely, Samantha Smith"

"Dear Samantha!
Got your letter, like many others who come to me these days from your country, from other countries of the world. It seems to me - I judge from the letter - that you are a brave and honest girl, like Becky - Tom Sawyer's girlfriend from the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. All the boys and girls in our country know and love this book very much.

You write that you are very worried about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask if we're doing anything to stop the war from breaking out.
Your question is the most important of those that concern every person. I will answer you seriously and honestly.
Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying and are doing everything to ensure that there is no war between our countries, that there is no war on earth at all. This is what every Soviet person wants. This is how the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.

The Soviet people are well aware of how terrible and destructive war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which aspired to dominate the whole world, attacked our country, burned and devastated many thousands of our cities and villages, and killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.
In that war, which ended in our victory, we were in alliance with the United States, fighting together for the liberation of many peoples from the Nazi invaders. I hope you know this from your history lessons at school. And today we really want to live in peace, trade and cooperate with all our neighbors around the globe - both far and near. And, of course, with such a great country as the United States of America.

Both America and we have nuclear weapons - terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we don't want it to ever be used. That's why Soviet Union solemnly announced to the whole world that never - never! will not be the first to use nuclear weapons against any country, and in general we propose to stop their further production and begin to destroy all their stockpiles on earth.

It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to your second question: “Why do you want to conquer the whole world, or at least the United States?” We do not want anything like that. No one in our vast and beautiful country, neither workers and peasants, nor writers and doctors, nor adults and children, nor members of the government, wants either a big or a "small" war.
We want peace - we have things to do: grow bread, build and invent, write books and fly into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all the peoples of the planet. For my children and for you, Samantha.

I invite you, if your parents allow you, to come to our country, it would be best in the summer. You will get to know our country, meet your peers, visit an international Kid `s camp- Artek - on the seashore. And you will see for yourself: in the Soviet Union - everyone is for peace and friendship between peoples.
Thank you for your letter. I wish you all the best.
Y. Andropov»

Journalists of the USSR, the USA and the whole world followed Samantha's every step, every phrase. Before flying home on July 22, Samantha smiled at the cameras and shouted in Russian with a smile: “We will live!” And in her book “My Journey to the USSR,” Samantha wrote that “they are just like us.”

The death of the famous girl, many in the United States associated with the activities of the KGB, in the USSR - on the contrary - with the CIA. Be that as it may, a thorough investigation of the accident showed that the entire responsibility for the accident lies with the pilot. In addition, the death of Samantha at that time was not beneficial for either the United States or the USSR.

Samantha Smith (1972-1985)

June 29 to an American Samantha Smith she would have turned 44 years old, but her life was cut short in 1985. Then the whole world was talking about this girl: she wrote a letter to Andropov and came to the USSR at his invitation as a goodwill ambassador. She was called the smallest peacemaker, and this event was the beginning of the "warming" of relations between the USA and the USSR. And two years later, the girl died in a plane crash, which made many doubt the accident of this sudden death.

On July 7, 1983, ten-year-old American schoolgirl Samantha Smith flew to the USSR. Little peace ambassador, snowdrop cold war, a propaganda tool - no matter how they called this girl, who changed the view of the citizens of two huge states on each other. Samantha lived only thirteen years, but managed to become perhaps the most famous child in the world. Thanks to her initiative, openness and sincerity, American television for the first time showed not tanks and parades, but playing Soviet children, while Soviet people saw for the first time that Americans also have families.

"Dear Mr. Andropov..."

In the spring of 1983, the Pravda newspaper published a letter addressed to Yuri Andropov, who was elected general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee a few months ago, tells the Air Force:

“My name is Samantha Smith. I'm 10 years old. Congratulations on your new appointment, the letter said. “I am very worried that a nuclear war will break out between the Soviet Union and the United States. Are you for war or not? If you are against, then please tell me how you are going to prevent war? Of course, you don't have to answer this question, but I wanted to know why you want to conquer the whole world, or at least our country. The Lord created the earth so that we could all live in peace together and not fight.”

The letter received a great response - it was published in the Pravda newspaper, Soviet citizens started talking about it. Of course, this was not an accident - the message of a young American woman could not get into central media Soviet Union without specific directives. As it turned out later, it was handed over to the newspaper by one of the employees of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He understood how the conversion of an American child could be used to the benefit of the country. Therefore, along with the publication of Samantha's letter in the Pravda newspaper, comments appeared about how American children are being frightened by a nuclear threat allegedly coming from the USSR.

Obviously, such a letter from an American woman would not have appeared on the pages of Soviet newspapers without an order from above.

Later it became known that "at the top" the letter was considered beneficial for the reputation of the country, which at that time was exhausted by the arms race and four years of war in Afghanistan. The publication of Samantha's letter in Pravda was preceded by US statements about the deployment of missile defense in Europe and about the program " star wars". And Reagan's speech, in which he called the USSR an "evil empire." At the same time, protests against nuclear weapons were growing in the West, and demonstrators criticized not only the USSR, but also Reagan's policy of catching up and surpassing the Soviet Union in the nuclear race. The girl's letter in the USSR was considered an opportunity to "stretch an olive branch" to America, as former diplomat in the USSR Donald Jensen put it.

Jane Smith, Samantha's mother, still lives in the small town of Manchester, Maine, from where a letter was sent in November 1982 to the address "Mr. Yuri Andropov, Kremlin, Moscow, USSR." The woman says that her daughter has always loved to write letters. Once she saw on TV Elizabeth II, who was on a visit on the other side of the border, in Canada. The British queen so impressed Samantha's imagination that she wrote her a letter, to which a response came after a while. The girl concluded that it was worth writing letters and that they would definitely be answered.

Invitation to the USSR

However, Andropov (or his assistant) did not answer the letter. 10-year-old Samantha was giving interviews to journalists from all over the world who sought her out as soon as the letter was published in Pravda, and the question of whether Andropov wanted war remained open. Then Samantha wrote a second letter, this time to the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, in which she asked if Andropov was going to answer her questions. And on April 25, 1983, Pravda published Andropov's answer to Samantha, which was immediately reprinted by American newspapers.

“It seems to me,” I judge from the letter, “that you are a brave and honest girl, like Becky, Tom Sawyer’s girlfriend,” this is how Andropov’s letter begins, to which the Western media often attributed a love of jazz and American literature. He also writes that the question asked by Samantha is the most important for a thinking person.

Further, the author of the letter recalls that the USSR and the USA fought together in World War II, and writes that the USSR wants to live in peace "with such a great country as the United States." In conclusion, he invites Samantha to visit the Soviet Union and see with his own eyes its peacefulness.

On July 7, 1983, the girl flew to Moscow with her parents. Most experts reject the suggestion that the Smiths were immediately "recruited" by the Soviet secret services. Rather, they led a certain "trend". The Smiths were taken to the Lenin Mausoleum and to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but they did not try to tie Samantha's pioneer tie, and in general, judging by Jane's memoirs, the authorities were politically correct.

Samantha with Valentina Tereshkova. Photo: RIA Novosti

Samantha was introduced to the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova and other celebrities, but Andropov himself, who had been seriously ill almost from the moment he was appointed Secretary General, sent gifts instead of himself, citing being busy. The Smiths were accommodated in the best rooms of hotels for foreign tourists and were taken around Moscow in a representative Chaika. And only in the Crimean pioneer camp "Artek", where the Smiths were sent for three days, Samantha, who announced that she would live with the rest of the children, tasted a little Soviet life: when she saw yellow Soviet sausages, she refused to eat them, "because they should be red" .

Leaving the Soviet Union, in front of reporters, Samantha said in Russian: “We will live!”.

Leonid Velikhov, deputy editor of Top Secret, who was in his early 20s that year, says he was initially skeptical of Samantha Smith. “When we saw Samantha in person, that skepticism disappeared a bit,” Velikhov told the BBC Russian Service. “She was very charming, undeniably very sincere.”

The American journalists who accompanied the Smiths everywhere on the trip were also sympathetic to Samantha, who surprisingly quickly learned not to be embarrassed in front of the cameras aimed at her. The New York Times called her "the schoolgirl who disarmed the Russians."

After returning from the USSR, Samantha became very popular in her homeland. She was invited to become a special correspondent for the Disney channel, to appear in TV shows, the girl wrote the book "Journey to the Soviet Union", which she dedicated to children around the world.

Plane crash - an accident or a special operation

On August 25, 1985, Samantha and her father were returning home from London from the filming of the series Lime Street. A small aircraft Beechcraft 99, flying from Boston to Maine, unsuccessfully entered the runway and crashed. All six passengers and two pilots were killed.

The Soviet press "between the lines" hinted that Samantha could have been killed: the cause of the crash is unknown, the plane is safe, and the Smiths were allegedly threatened. It was too hard for people on both sides of the ocean to believe that the life of a thirteen-year-old girl could end so quickly and tragically. The KGB and the CIA were blamed for her death, they called the incident a special operation designed to complete the "mediation" between the two countries, they said that the girl had become too independent in her judgments.

Samantha's mother Jane Smith says she has no reason to doubt the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation. “Journalists from Russia have often asked me if I believe that the plane crash was staged. I can’t know for sure, but I have no reason to believe that it was a conspiracy, ”she said in an interview with the BBC Russian Service.

When Samantha died, they tried to keep her memory both in the Soviet Union and in the United States. In the USA, they created the Samantha Smith Foundation and established a day of her memory in the state of Maine, where the girl lived and now her mother lives. Schools in the states of New York and Washington are named after Samantha. In the pioneer camp "Morskoy" there is an alley named after Samantha Smith and a memorial stele in her honor. The mountain peak of the Caucasus, a sea vessel, a rare Yakutian diamond, an asteroid and several streets in Russian regional centers were named after the girl.

Decades later, most of those who remember Samantha's story are inclined to believe that her death was an accident, like the combination of circumstances that made her a celebrity. Of course, it was not without propaganda, but it turned out that Samantha played into the hands of both superpowers: she charmed the Soviet people with her American spontaneity and showed the Americans the human face of the USSR.