Samantha Smith is an American schoolgirl from Maine who became world famous thanks to the letter she wrote to Andropov, who had just become Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council and General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee at the height of the Cold War.
Samantha once saw US President Reagan on the cover of Time Magazine and the new Soviet leader Andropov as Person of the Year. One of the articles in that magazine said that the new leader of the USSR is a very dangerous person, and that under his leadership the Soviet Union is more threatening to the security of the United States than ever before. Then Samantha asked her mother that “if everyone is so afraid of Andropov, why don’t they write him a letter and ask if he is going to start a war?” The mother jokingly replied: “Well, write it yourself,” Samantha wrote and everything started...
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I am very worried that a nuclear war will break out between Russia and the United States. Are you going to vote to start the war or not? If you are against it, please tell me how you are going to help prevent war? You, of course, are not obligated to answer this question, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world, or at least our country. The Lord created the earth so that we could all live together in peace and not fight.
Sincerely yours,
Samantha Smith
Samantha’s letter was published in the Pravda newspaper, the girl was happy when she found out about it, but by that time she had not yet received an answer to her letter. Then she wrote a letter to the Soviet ambassador to the United States, asking whether Andropov was going to answer her. On April 26, 1983, she received a letter from Andropov in Russian, typed on tinted paper and signed in blue ink, dated April 19, 1983, and accompanied by an English translation. Below is the Russian version of the letter:
Dear Samantha!
I received your letter, like many others coming 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, similar to Becky, the girlfriend of Tom Sawyer from the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. All boys and girls in our country know and love this book.
You write that you are very concerned about whether a nuclear war will happen between our two countries. And you ask if we are doing anything to prevent war from breaking out.
Your question is the most important one that any thinking person could ask. I will answer you seriously and honestly.
Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything to ensure that there is no war between our countries, so that there is no war on earth at all. This is what every Soviet person wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
Soviet people know well what a terrible and destructive thing war is. 42 years ago, Nazi Germany, which sought to dominate the whole world, attacked our country, burned and ravaged 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, and together we fought for the liberation of many peoples from the Nazi invaders. I hope you know this from history lessons at school. And today we really want to live in peace, trade and cooperate with all our neighbors around the globe - both distant and close. 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 is why the 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 its further production and begin to destroy all its reserves 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 don't want anything like that. No one in our 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 something 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 your children and for you, Samantha.
I invite you, if your parents allow it, to come to us, preferably in the summer. You will get to know our country, meet your peers, and visit an international camp for children - in Artek by the sea. And you will see for yourself: in the Soviet Union everyone is for peace and friendship between peoples.
Thank you for your congratulations. I wish you all the best in your new life.
Yu. Andropov
And she finally arrived. Samantha and her parents left for the USSR on July 7, 1983. She was met at the airport by many people who were not indifferent to the event and politics. During the 2 weeks that the Smith family spent in the Soviet Union, Goodwill Ambassador Samantha visited Moscow, Leningrad and the main pioneer camp "Artek" in Crimea. At the Artek camp, the leadership was preparing to receive Samantha: they completed the dining room, prepared the best room, and even sewed her a pioneer uniform at random, without knowing the size. Subsequently, she really liked the uniform and took it with her. In the camp, she followed the usual daily routine, like all Soviet children. Although the seriously ill Andropov never met Samantha, they spoke on the phone.
The media of the USSR, the USA and the whole world followed her every step, every phrase. Before flying home on July 22, Samantha smiled at the television cameras and shouted in Russian with a smile: “We will live!” And in her book “Journey to the Soviet Union,” Samantha concluded that “they are just like us.”
30 years ago, Samantha Smith, a world-famous girl from Maine, passed away, who, at the height of the Cold War, wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Supreme Council and General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Yuri Andropov, who had just assumed a new position.
Her tragic death on August 25, 1985 (on this day Samantha Smith died in a plane crash while returning from the UK with her father) caused a lot of rumors and speculation.
Was Samantha Smith, who was called an angel of peace after her letter to Yuri Andropov, really a random American girl? How did her fate change after her visit to the USSR?
August 1985. The most famous girl in the world, Samantha Smith, dies in a plane crash. The world's largest media outlets report her death. But most of all they mourn her in the Soviet Union. Three years before the tragedy, a young American woman from Maine writes a letter to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Yuri Andropov's answer, and then the Smiths' visit to the USSR, become a world sensation.
Samantha Smith is called a victim of propaganda. Rumors are spreading that the Soviet and American intelligence services have agreed: they chose the most beautiful girl and sent her as an ambassador of peace to the USSR. The sudden death of a child seems to confirm the conspiracy theory.
November 1982. The American Time prints on its cover a portrait of the new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. The circulation sells out in a matter of days. The weekly with a portrait of Yuri Andropov ends up on the coffee table of Jane and Arthur Smith. Their parents' conversation about the new Soviet leader is heard by their daughter, ten-year-old Samantha.
According to legend, it was Jane who suggested that her daughter write to Moscow. In her childishly naive letter, Samantha asks Andropov questions that concern her.
"Samantha Smith was a little writer. She wrote letters not only to Andropov, but also to kings and queens. She could not understand why they were not answering her. She wrote that everyone is afraid of you, Yuri Vladimirovich, because you are from the KGB, everyone is afraid “If you start a war, let’s live in peace,” says intelligence services historian Nikolai Dolgopolov.
Early 80s. The threat of global conflict is more real than ever. In 1979, the Soviet Union sends its troops into Afghanistan. The West perceives this as a violation of the geopolitical balance.
The Soviet Union began to be accused, first of all, of actually having aggressive plans to seize other territories and use military force. Soviet tanks were stationed near Berlin, in Warsaw, in Czechoslovakia, and in southern Europe. The Europeans believed that there was no problem for the Soviet units to reach the English Channel in a few hours.
1981 Ronald Reagan becomes President of the United States. A staunch anti-communist, he threatens to consign Marxism-Leninism to the dustbin of history. In the country of the Soviets, meanwhile, former KGB chief Yuri Andropov comes to power. It becomes clear that the new Secretary General does not intend to make concessions in relations with the West. The situation is heating up to the limit. The USA and the USSR are intensifying the arms race. Everyone understands that the consequences of the impending conflict will be irreversible. After all, now American and Soviet structures are enough to destroy the Earth several hundred times. The two superpowers urgently need detente. It was at this time that the young American woman’s message to Andropov was published by the Soviet press.
A letter from Yuri Andropov to an ordinary girl from Maine becomes a sensation. It is almost impossible to believe that the leader of a world superpower answered her so easily. As if to prove it, a photograph of Samantha holding a letter from the USSR Secretary General in her hands is printed on the front pages of major newspapers.
The letter does not contain any threats or accusations against the United States. He says that the Soviet Union is not interested in war, that we want to live and work peacefully.
In a matter of days, Samantha becomes a world celebrity. Schoolchildren in the USSR especially like her story. Every second Soviet boy keeps newspaper clippings with her photographs. For them, the young American is a fighter for world peace, an idol.
Before the trip, the Smiths are invited to the USSR Embassy. And after some time, a US State Department employee visits the family and gives instructions on how to behave in the Soviet Union.
July 7, 1983. Samantha and her parents fly to Moscow. Crowds of people greet them at the airport, but the girl will never see Andropov - he is already seriously ill. But the Secretary General will honor the little guest with a phone call.
Everyone is surprised not only by Samantha’s ideal behavior, worthy of a first lady. The girl turns out to be extremely pretty and photogenic, as if she had been selected among thousands of others for a trip to the USSR. And the timing was right. There are suggestions in the Western press that Samantha’s story is the result of joint actions by the CIA and the KGB.
The photographer accompanied the Smith family during their trip to the USSR. At the Sovetskaya Hotel, the family was greeted every morning by a translator, a guide and a whole group of journalists. The Smiths lived here for about a week. On excursions around Moscow, Americans were taken on a government-issued Chaika.
“There was an impression that she was the prime minister, the head of a special state. In one of the photographs, she stands with her parents at the tomb of the unknown soldier. She understands that here we need to be silent and sympathize,” photographer Yuri Abramochkin shares his memories.
Lenin's Mausoleum, a Soviet shrine, is also on the tour. In those years it was the main attraction of Moscow. Hundreds of people came to see Lenin every day.
A walk along Red Square, a trip to the Obraztsov Puppet Theater and a trip to the Hermitage - as if the Kremlin wants to surprise not a girl from the American province, but the Western world as a whole. Every step of the little guest is under the strictest control. We must not allow the slightest provocation.
Samantha's most vivid impression from her trip to the USSR was visiting a children's camp in Crimea. On the occasion of her arrival, the Artek building is being urgently repaired, where the little American, like all children, goes to exercise, to the canteen, and even wears a uniform.
"...In Artek we were greeted with songs by several hundred children dressed in festive pioneer uniforms. The orchestra was playing, and the pioneers were chanting my name. I was timid and could not utter a word. Young dancers approached me, carrying a loaf of bread with a small salt shaker. Their dance was like a scene from a ballet, and for a moment I again felt like I was in a dream..." Samantha would later write in her book "Travel to the USSR."
“A girl from a completely different environment, a different cultural space, she fit into the situation so organically - this suggests that she is an unusual girl. She also communicated freely with adults. Of course, she was noted. Because not everyone can even bear such attention.” , - says Galina Sukhoveyko, deputy director of the All-Union children's camp "Artek" from 1979 to 1986.
“Our children showed her the uniform, she liked it, she dressed up. They tied bows on her and she turned into just an “Artek” uniform. When her parents saw it, they asked to remove some elements so that there would not be a complete identity,” says Galina Sukhoveyko.
Samantha lived in the Morskoy camp, the oldest and considered the best of all ten. It was there that foreign delegations mainly settled. The girl chose to live not with her parents in a separate building, but with the children in a detachment. Her roommate and later friend was Natasha Kashirina.
The young Leningrad girl was assigned to Samantha because of her fluent English, which she had studied since early childhood. First with my mother, a teacher, and then in a specialized school.
Journalists from the USSR, the USA and all over the world followed Samantha’s every step, every phrase. Samantino’s “We will live!”, which she shouted in Russian just before departure, was remembered by everyone for a long time. In 14 days, the Smith family is learned from newspapers in all remote corners of the USSR and the USA. Samantha's parents will say that both countries only benefited from this trip, but to a greater extent this story will benefit the Soviet Union.
Returning home, she also spoke, gave interviews, and expressed her opinion that the USSR was not needed. And in her book “Journey to the Soviet Union,” Samantha concluded that “they are just like us.”
Upon returning from the USSR, Samantha is no longer the same little girl she was a month ago. She grows up in one summer. In 1983, there is no more famous child in the world. In addition to journalists, American intelligence agencies often question her, trying to find out in the smallest detail about everything she saw in the Union.
“Special services have always been collecting information. And although they talked to her like a child, they worked on the knowledge of human psychology,” explains Leonid Velekhov.
Miss Smith becomes America's youngest ambassador. If the intelligence services chose her, they did a good casting. After a trip to the USSR, Samantha is invited to television to interview a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party.
August 25, 1985. Two years have passed since the trip to the USSR. Samantha returns with her father from the UK, where she took part in the filming of a popular comedy TV show. The plane crashes while landing at Augusta Airport. Few people believe that the plane crash was an accident.
“Of course, it was tempting to put forward the version that this was a CIA job,” says Nikolai Dolgopolov.
“Such versions always appear, even in cases of huge plane crashes, and even more so here,” says Leonid Velekhov.
In Samantha’s death, not only experts see the trace of the KGB and the CIA - supposedly the special services wanted to complete the operation in this way. Just a few months before the tragedy, Gorbachev became Secretary General of the USSR. The new leader of the country is open to a peaceful dialogue with the United States, and the two countries no longer need mediators in this matter.
“She became too independent in her judgments. The image of the enemy that was created in America about the USSR was shaken. The girl grew up, became smarter, it was impossible to shut her down. There is no evidence, but her mother, Jane, was convinced that the accident was staged,” - explains Rimma Koshurnikova.
Later in the USSR, a version would appear among journalists that the Smiths were threatened. It seems that Samantha’s overly pro-Soviet statements ran counter to US policy. The American press will claim that everything was exactly the opposite. It was too difficult for people on both sides of the ocean to believe that the life of a 13-year-old girl could be cut short so early and so tragically.
Material last updated 06/22/2017
A new round of the Cold War
On August 25, 1985, a small twin-engine Beechcraft 99 plane crashed while landing at Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport. There were two pilots and 6 passengers on board, none of whom survived.
This tragic accident would hardly have been noticed anywhere except the American state of Maine, where it occurred, if one of the victims of the crash had not been named Samantha Smith.
Samantha was only 13 years old at the time of her death, but the whole world knew her. It all started in the fall of 1982, when in the USSR after the death Leonid Brezhnev came to power Yuri Andropov.
The former head of the KGB of the USSR was known in the West as a tough person who did not intend to ignore attempts US President Ronald Reagan organize a “crusade against communism.” The Cold War was gaining momentum again, and the rhetoric on both sides suggested that it could well become “hot.”
The American magazine Time Magazine published on its cover a photo of US President Reagan and the new Soviet leader Andropov as a person of the year. One of the magazine articles said that the new leader of the USSR is a very dangerous person and that under his leadership the Soviet Union threatens the security of the United States more than ever.
"Mr. Andropov, are you going to start a war or not?"
One Sunday, a resident of the town of Houlton was reading an issue of Time Magazine at home. Jane Smith. After reading the material about Andropov, the woman told her 10-year-old daughter Samantha: “It would be great if Andropov had fresh ideas about how the United States and the USSR could live in peace.”
Samantha listened to her mother with interest and immediately asked a lot of questions about the Cold War and about the new Soviet leader. “If everyone is so afraid of Andropov, why don’t they write him a letter and ask if he is going to start a war?” - the girl asked her mother.
“Well, write to him yourself,” Jane joked. Samantha went to her room and after a while appeared with a letter in her hands.
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your election to your new position. I am very worried that a nuclear war will break out between the USSR and the United States. Are you going to start a war or not? If you are against war, please tell me how you are going to prevent war? You, of course, are not obliged to answer my question, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the whole world or at least our country. God created the Earth so that we could all live together in peace and not fight.
Sincerely yours,
Samantha Smith
Jane, after consulting with her husband Arthur, decided to send Samantha's message to the person to whom it was addressed.
Before Andropov, Samantha wrote to the queen
Samantha was sure that the answer would definitely come. The fact is that Yuri Andropov was not the first head of state to whom she wrote. Once, after seeing a report on TV from Canada, where she was visiting Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, Samantha wrote her a letter and received an answer after a while. After this, the girl decided that nothing was impossible.
At the beginning of 1983, Samantha Smith's letter to Yuri Andropov was published in Pravda, and the girl's name became widely known on both sides of the ocean. Journalists flocked to the Smiths to interview Samantha, but she herself was perplexed: why was there no answer from Andropov himself?
And she wrote again - this time Ambassador of the USSR to the USA Yuri Dobrynin. In the letter, Samantha asked why Andropov did not answer. “I thought my questions were good, what difference does it make that I’m 10 years old,” she wrote.
Secretary General's response
Samantha Smith in a national costume, sewn for her by the children of the applied arts circle of the Moscow Palace of Pioneers. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
Dear Samantha!
I received your letter, like many others coming 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, similar to Becky, the girlfriend of Tom Sawyer from the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. All boys and girls in our country know and love this book.
You write that you are very concerned about whether a nuclear war will happen between our two countries. And you ask if we are doing anything to prevent war from breaking out.
Your question is the most important one that worries every person. I will answer you seriously and honestly.
Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying and doing everything to ensure that there is no war between our countries, so that there is no war on earth at all. This is what every Soviet person wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
Soviet people know well how terrible and destructive war is. 42 years ago, Nazi Germany, which sought to dominate the whole world, attacked our country, burned and ravaged many thousands of our cities and villages, and killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.
Samantha Smith in front of the State Central Puppet Theater. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
In that war, which ended in our victory, we were in alliance with the United States, together we fought for the liberation of many peoples from the Nazi invaders. I hope you know this from history lessons at school. And today we really want to live in peace, trade and cooperate with all our neighbors around the globe - both distant and close. 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 is why the 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 don't want anything like that. No one in our huge 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 something 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 your children and for you, Samantha.
I invite you, if your parents allow, to come to our country, it would be best in the summer. You will get to know our country, meet your peers, and visit the international children'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.
Yu. Andropov
Samantha Smith and her parents in the museum “Office and Apartment of V. I. Lenin in the Kremlin.” Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
The schoolgirl was received as the head of state
The answer was immediately republished by the American media. Probably no speech by the Soviet General Secretary caused more excitement in America.
“An American girl was invited to the USSR personally by the Soviet leader,” it was a real sensation. It soon became known that the Smiths accepted the invitation and Samantha would come to the Soviet Union with her parents.
The Smiths had no prejudice against the USSR. Samantha's mother was in the Soviet Union as part of a student group in the 1960s. However, they had no desire to spoil relations with their own state. Therefore, when a State Department official visited them before the trip, Samantha's parents asked what they should do if they were asked to make political statements of an anti-American nature. “They won’t do that,” the official replied laconically.
Samantha Smith during a meeting with cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
These were amazing days. Politicians faded into the background - Americans and Russians closely followed the child's journey. Samantha was besieged by reporters, eager to capture her every move, her every reaction.
The Smiths visited Moscow and Leningrad. Artists, writers met with Samantha, the first person in the world met her female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Only the meeting with Andropov did not take place. The Soviet leader was seriously ill, which was not advertised, and it was impossible to receive Samantha in the hospital ward. Nevertheless, Andropov and Samantha talked on the phone.
Simple girl
And then there was a trip to Artek, where the American literally disappeared among her peers. Everyone who interacted with Samantha at Artek later said that she was a completely ordinary child, without any “stardom”. She went to exercises with everyone else, attended clubs, had lunch - in a word, she led the same lifestyle as the rest of the Artek residents.
Perhaps the biggest shock for Samantha at Artek was... swimming in the sea. The fact is that before that she had swam only in fresh lakes in Maine and knew about the existence of salt water only by hearsay. But soon she was diving and swimming along with everyone else.
At Artek, at the request of Samantha’s parents, she was protected from the constant attention of journalists. Maybe that’s why she later called the days spent in the pioneer camp the best of the trip. When Samantha was leaving, she was allowed to take the uniform she wore at Artek - the girl really liked it.
Samantha Smith in the Artek camp with the pioneers. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
The Smiths flew home on July 22, 1983. Before departure, Samantha smiled at the television cameras and shouted in Russian: “We will live!”
An American girl from Maine managed to cope with what politicians could not. Following the reports about her trip, Americans and Russians saw each other not as ideological enemies, but as ordinary people with similar life problems, habits, and joys.
Upon returning to the United States, Samantha Smith wrote the book “My Journey to the USSR,” in which she wrote about the inhabitants of the Soviet Union: “They are just like us.”
Pilot error
The detente in American-Soviet relations achieved thanks to Samantha's trip did not last long. In September 1983, a South Korean Boeing was shot down over the territory of the USSR, Reagan declared the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and there was a whiff of war in the air again. But this was not Samantha Smith's fault.
Cover of Samantha Smith's book “My Journey to the USSR.” Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
In December 1983, Samantha was invited to Japan as America's youngest ambassador, where she met Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and participated in the Children's International Symposium in Kobe. In her speech at the symposium, she proposed that Soviet and American leaders exchange granddaughters for two weeks each year, explaining that the president "would not want to bomb a country that his granddaughter is visiting."
Samantha's popularity in the United States logically led to her starting to work on television. In 1984, she hosted a show on the Disney Channel in which she interviewed candidates for president of the United States. Then she began to be invited to appear in films and television series.
On August 25, 1985, Samantha and her father were returning home from filming the series. Their mother was waiting for them at the airport. However, they were not destined to meet...
The death of the girl was a real shock. Rumors immediately spread that the disaster had been staged. In the USA they suspected the machinations of the KGB, in the USSR, accordingly, they believed that the CIA was involved in what happened.
But no signs of intelligence involvement were found. The investigation showed that in difficult weather conditions the pilot made a mistake and missed the runway.
Sometimes I still wonder with worry whether the next day will be the last day of Life on Earth.
But I am sure: the more people think about the fate of the world, the sooner peace on the planet will win.
Samantha Smith, "My Journey to the USSR"
In 1983 about an American girl Samantha Smith known all over the world. She was called the youngest peacemaker. She wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov and came with her family to the USSR. Many consider this event to be the beginning of a “warming” of relations between the two great states.
In the fall of 1982, a girl read in a magazine that he had come to power in the USSR Yuri Andropov. The author of the article said that this event could become the beginning of a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. Then the girl asked her mother a question about why everyone is so afraid of Andropov, because you can simply ask if he is going to start a war...
In response, Samantha’s mother jokingly advised her daughter ask Andropov this question yourself. But the girl took it seriously and wrote a letter to the Secretary General. In it, she congratulated him on his new position, and also asked if he was going to start a war and conquer the whole world.
The girl’s letter was published in the Pravda newspaper in 1983. But Samantha did not receive an answer to it. Then the girl wrote another letter to the USSR Embassy in the USA, where she asked whether Andropov was going to answer her. April 26, 1983 the girl received an answer.
Andropov wrote that the Soviet Union was not going to fight at all, that all Soviet citizens wanted peace in the world, and also reminded the girl that during World War II their countries were allies. Also Yuri Vladimirovich invited the girl to stay in the USSR in the summer.
After this, the girl became extremely popular. Here, for example, is her interview for one of the American channels.
In July 1983, Samantha and her parents arrived in the USSR, where they spent 2 weeks. During this time, the family visited Moscow, Leningrad and Artek. The meeting with Andropov did not take place because he was ill by that time, but they talked on the phone. Before leaving, the girl said: "Will live!"
It’s interesting that for Samantha’s arrival, the dining room was completed at Artek, and the girl was given the best room. Her peers also gave her pioneer uniform, which Samantha liked and took it with her. The girl lived according to the same schedule as all the other pioneers.
Later in her book “Journey to the USSR” Samantha wrote: "They are just like us..." By the way, in 1986, Soviet schoolgirl Katya Lycheva flew to the United States on a return visit. But this happened after Samantha’s death.
Samantha was often invited to participate in various shows and series. One of these trips became fatal. No one could survive the crash: 2 pilots and 6 passengers were killed, among whom were Samantha Smith and her father Arthur.
There have been various controversies regarding this disaster. Versions have been put forward that the accident was faked either Soviet or American intelligence services. Allegedly, the girl grew up and became wiser. At the same time, she violated the belief that the USSR was an enemy for the whole world. And she couldn’t close her mouth...
A thorough investigation into the accident revealed that the cause of the accident was pilot error, which missed the landing strip in difficult weather conditions.
In conclusion, we suggest you watch a story about Samantha on Soviet television. It is very interesting, if only because the journalists did not miss the opportunity to make an attack on their American colleagues.
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