On this day in 1983, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov\u2019s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war. At the time, the United States and Soviet Union were Cold War enemies.<\/p>\n
President Ronald Reagan, a passionate anti-communist, had dubbed the Soviet Union the \u201cevil empire\u201d and called for massive increases in U.S. defense spending to meet the perceived Soviet threat. In his public relations duel with Reagan, known as the \u201cGreat Communicator,\u201d Andropov, who had succeeded longtime Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, assumed a folksy, almost grandfatherly approach that was incongruous with the negative image most Americans had of the Soviets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andropov\u2019s letter said that Russian people wanted to \u201clive in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on the globe, no matter how close or far away they are, and, certainly, with such a great country as the United States of America.\u201d In response to Smith\u2019s question about whether the Soviet Union wished to prevent nuclear war, Andropov declared, \u201cYes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth.\u201d Andropov also complimented Smith, comparing her to the spunky character Becky Thatcher from \u201cThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer\u201d by Mark Twain.<\/p>\n
Smith, born June 29, 1972, accepted Andropov\u2019s invitation and flew to the Soviet Union with her parents for a visit. Afterward, she became an international celebrity and peace ambassador, making speeches, writing a book and even landing a role on an American television series. In February 1984, Yuri Andropov died from kidney failure and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. The following year, in August 1985, Samantha Smith died tragically in a plane crash at age 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On this day in 1983, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov\u2019s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3508],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lead-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}