In the context of the cold war in which the United States and the Soviet Union were since 1946, the residents of both countries, it was difficult to remain calm. Each side expected the attack to the other. Brave schoolgirl, accustomed to asking questions directly, we decided to find out. How Samantha Smith entered into correspondence with the head of the Soviet Union, visited Moscow and became a celebrity — in the material mos.ru.
In November 1982, the American Time magazine has placed a portrait of the new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yuri Andropov on the cover and gave it and the Soviet Union somewhat disturbing materials. The name of Andropov in the West was associated with the suppression of the Prague spring and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the suppression of dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. In the United States feared that under his leadership, Soviet policy will become more aggressive. Very soon, in the spring of 1983, US President Ronald Reagan expressed a General excitement, calling in his famous speech, the Soviet Union the evil Empire.
And then, in the autumn of 1982, American schoolgirl Samantha reed Smith was sitting at home in Manchester (Maine). My mom was reading the latest issue of Time, and little Samantha was getting worse. The day before she had watched a TV show that talked about the nuclear threat. The explosion can destroy a planet, it was said in the transmission. The next day she woke up and the first thing I thought: what if today is the last day of life on Earth?
he Closed the journal, Samantha looked at the cover and strict face with glasses on it. And he what he thinks about the nuclear threat, Mr. Andropov? And what do you think the Soviet citizens? After the Second world war, probably everyone in the world should dream only about the world?
“I asked my mother to write to Mr. Andropov a letter. After all, you need to know why in the world is in such turmoil. And mom said, “Why don’t you write him yourself?” And I wrote,” she will later tell in his book “Journey to the Soviet Union”.
Samantha was only 10, but my mother’s offer did not bother her. The girl already had experience of correspondence with heads of state. When she was five years old, Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Canada. On hearing this, Samantha wrote her a letter and received from the Queen the answer. And this time, wasting no time, she put down the magazine and sat down to write the letter.
Mr. Andropov for a long time did not answer. In the spring of 1983 about an American schoolgirl wrote to the Soviet newspaper “Pravda”. In one of the rooms contained the fragment of a letter, the question “Why do You want to conquer the world or at least our country?” was posed in the title. But the answer she was expecting, it was not. Then Samantha wrote another letter — this time to the Soviet Ambassador to the United States — and reminded myself. In late April, Samantha received an envelope from the Soviet Union. In his long letter Yuriy Andropov assured her that the Soviet Union will never use nuclear weapons first against any country.
“We want peace — we have something to do: to grow crops, to build and invent, write books and fly into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the world. For your children and for you, Samantha”, — was said in the letter. And in the end it was the invitation to visit the USSR, “the best of all — summer.”
the same day about the letter, journalists learned, and returned from school, the girl I saw at his house a crowd of reporters and photographers. They all wanted to know the details of her correspondence with Andropov.
the cold war that began immediately after world war II and lasted until the late 1980s, there were several peaks. One of the latter came at the childhood of Samantha’s. In 1979 the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan that the United States was regarded as an attempt to transition to a policy of expansion. States began to prepare to attack the Soviet forces in 1981 in America began production of neural weapons. In 1982, became aware of the exercise “Shield-82”, in which participated the Warsaw Pact countries. The Soviet Union used in the ballistic missile and anti-missile weapons.
In March 1983, Reagan announced the beginning of the program the Strategic defense initiative. People received the name “star wars”, it envisaged the creation of a large-scale missile defense system with space-based elements. From 1983 to 1986 Soviet missiles were in a state of combat readiness. Both countries were in tension, it is not surprising that Samantha Smith her letter and a trip to the Soviet Union became a sensation for both powers.
to Change the situation began in 1987. Two years before that, in 1985, the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee took Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union took a course on “new political thinking”. In 1988 began the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and Gorbachev spoke at the UN General Assembly with a program of weakening the opposition. Finally the cold war ended in 1991. In the same year ceased to exist the Soviet Union. But it was too late.
Spring and early summer of 1983, Samantha Smith spent answering the questions of reporters from different countries: she was calling and texting from the UK, Australia, Japan. Wrote and her peers from other States. They all admired her courage — here so to take and simply refer to Andropov! And then Samantha and her mom drove to new York, so the girl was able to take part in the filming of several TV — America wanted to see the little heroine, who decided to directly ask the questions that agitated them all.
Flights in the Soviet Union was scheduled for July 7. Leaving the cats and the dog, grandma, Samantha’s mom and dad went for two weeks to a distant land. She was ready — a serious girl is still stuck in spring in the library and read everything I could find about the Soviet Union. About something she was worried: what if the Soviet guys will not be friends with her if they think she’s a spy?
In Sheremetyevo Samantha also waiting reporters that she’s already a little used. Waiting for the Smiths, the guides took them to the hotel “Soviet”. From the luxurious building in the style of Stalin’s Empire Samantha was delighted — it seemed like a Palace. No less impression she made chicken Kiev, which she tried for the next day.
One of the first places that Samantha had visited in Moscow is the Red square. Here is how she later described the experience in his book:
a Little later, Samantha with her parents visited the Museum “Office and apartment VI Lenin in the Kremlin.” Samantha said that “he was the founder of the Soviet state. Like George Washington, we in the United States.” Smith also looked into the Grand Kremlin Palace (“What are large chandeliers! Each the size of a room!”), saw the faceted chamber, laid flowers at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Yuri Gagarin (“He was buried at the Kremlin wall, not far from the place where is buried John reed, an American, who told us about the October revolution of 1917 in the book “Ten days that shook the world””).
the same day, Samantha received an invitation to tea to Valentina Tereshkova, but looked to the first Soviet female astronaut, late, because tomorrow I planned to go to summer camp “Artek”. On the Black sea, Samantha’s been less than a week (“it’s not black, and is the same as the Atlantic ocean”). She liked to chat with the guys. When asked whether she wants to live in a hotel with his parents or in a camp with the girls, Samantha quickly said, “girls!” Later, she recalled the evening conversations with the guys (many spoke English) about the world and about friendship and noted that these conversations were unnecessary, and without words it was clear that the Soviet guys agree with her views.
After the “Artek” Samantha visited Leningrad and then returned to Moscow. They are with their parents walked around the exhibition center, where a ride on a real Russian Troika, took a trip to Krylatskoye, and looked built for the Olympics-80 sports centre — where Samantha had a ride on the track. The Bolshoi theatre did not work, the troupe went on tour, but visitors from America held a special tour of the building. View managed in the Moscow puppet theatre (now — the State academic Central puppet theatre named after Sergey Obraztsov), the Great Moscow circus on Vernadsky Prospekt, the animal Theatre named after V. L. Durov.
Very impressed with Samantha and her mom the Moscow metro.
on the last day it turned out that Yuri Androbrokers will not be able to meet with Samantha due to the tight schedule. Instead, the girl and her parents met Leonid Zamyatin, head of the Division of international information CPSU Central Committee. Gray-haired, smiling, fluent in English, he recalled Samantha American businessmen. He gave her gifts from Andropov and promised to convey the response to the collection of speeches of Mark TWAIN. Samantha chose this book as a gift to the leader of the Soviet Union, because in his letter he compared her to Becky Thatcher is a brave heroine of “the adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark TWAIN.
after Returning home, Samantha became a celebrity. She was invited on television, she was interviewed, she starred in the TV series. For example, in 1984, she appeared in a small cameo in the first season of the sitcom “Charles in charge”. The protagonist of the series, the student Charles, lives in a simple American family as a nanny of two boys and a teenage girl. Samantha Smith played one of the friends of Charles ward.
Samantha Also became a special correspondent of one of children’s television — she’s interviewed presidential candidates from the Democratic party. Young journalist focused on issues of nuclear disarmament, equality and the rights of the child. At the end of 1983, she visited the children’s Symposium in Kobe (Japan), where he spoke about his experience.
From all over the world in the Smith house flying letters. Samantha wrote children and adults, ordinary citizens and members of the public-political societies. To cope with the volume of correspondence helped her dad.
Sometimes she was asked if she understood that the Soviet Union showed her not all. Samantha replied that he understands and that she is also taking guests, showing them only worthy of their attention of the room. In one TV interview she was asked, do not you think the Samantha that used it. To this the girl replied: “I Think I was used. But if this was propaganda, the promotion of goodness and peace”.
Many thought that Samantha will become a politician when you grow up, but fate decreed otherwise. In late August, 1985, returning with his father from Britain, where she participated in the filming of the TV series “lime Street”, Samantha Smith died in a plane crash. The tragedy has spawned in the USSR a conspiracy theory, but the investigation revealed that the crash blame the pilot.
the name of the young Ambassador of America with love I remember to this day all over the world. In his native state every first Monday of June celebrates the day of Samantha Smith. In Moscow by the name of Samantha called the center of children’s diplomacy, founded in 1989.
