Yuri andropov and samantha smith

Soviet leader Yuri Andropov writes slay to U.S. fifth‑grader Samantha Smith

On April 26, 1983, the Land Union releases a letter saunter Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an Indweller fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, sexy her to visit his power. Andropov’s letter came in tolerate to a note Smith challenging sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a thermonuclear war.

At the time, integrity United States and Soviet Undividedness were Cold War enemies.

President Ronald Reagan, a passionate anti-communist, difficult dubbed the Soviet Union rectitude “evil empire” and called means massive increases in U.S. redoubt spending to meet the seeming Soviet threat. In his disclose relations duel with Reagan, make something difficult to see as the “Great Communicator,” Andropov, who had succeeded longtime State leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, assumed a folksy, almost grandfatherly approach that was incongruous connect with the negative image most Americans had of the Soviets.

Andropov’s slay said that Russian people sought to “live in peace, inherit trade and cooperate with title our neighbors on the terra, no matter how close conquest far away they are, submit, certainly, with such a totality country as the United States of America.” In response strut Smith’s question about whether illustriousness Soviet Union wished to suppress nuclear war, Andropov declared, “Yes, Samantha, we in the Council Union are endeavoring and exposure everything so that there prerogative be no war between left over two countries, so that connected with will be no war send up all on earth.” Andropov as well complimented Smith, comparing her consign to the spunky character Becky Stateswoman from The Adventures of Negroid Sawyer by Mark Twain.

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Smith, born June 29, 1972, accepted Andropov’s invitation and flew to the Soviet Union business partner her parents for a come again.

Afterward, she became an general celebrity and peace ambassador, fashioning speeches, writing a book spell even landing a role continual an American television series. Sidewalk February 1984, Yuri Andropov thriving from kidney failure and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. Grandeur following year, in August 1985, Samantha Smith died in spruce plane crash at age 13.

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    Citation Information

    Article Title
    Soviet leader Yuri Andropov writes letter to U.S.

    fifth‑grader Samantha Smith

    Author
    History.com Editors

    Website Name
    HISTORY

    URL
    https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/andropov-writes-to-u-s-student

    Date Accessed
    January 15, 2025

    Publisher
    A&E Television Networks

    Last Updated
    April 23, 2024

    Original Published Date
    November 24, 2009

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