Samantha Smith
Photo: Library of Congress.
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am 10 years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like it if you would. Why do you want to conquer the world or at least our country? God made the world for us to share and take care of. Not to fight over or have one group of people own it all. Please lets do what he wanted and have everybody be happy too.
Samantha Smith
With the encouragement of her mother, Houlton-born Samantha Smith wrote this letter to Yuri Andropov, General Secretary and leader of the USSR, in November 1982. Anxious about the possibility of nuclear war, Smith wanted to better understand the relationship between the two nuclear superpowers. Her letter was published in Pravda, the Soviet State newspaper, and her subsequent trip to the Soviet Union at Andropov's invitation made international news.
Smith and her parents-a professor at University of Maine at Augusta and a social worker with Maine Department of Human Services-spent two weeks in the Soviet Union, Moscow and Leningrad, with an entourage of press documenting every step of the way. She spoke to the press-and the world at large-about the similarities between the Soviet people and Americans. Smith's visit and interest in peace made her one of the youngest American goodwill ambassadors. She was beloved on both sides of the Atlantic and following her untimely death in an airplane crash in Auburn in 1985, she was internationally mourned.
Scientific discoveries, schools, and streets are named after Samantha Smith in both the United States and former Soviet satellite states. A statue of her is outside of the Cultural Building in Augusta, and the first Monday in June is known as "Samantha Smith Day," codified into Maine state law.
