Citizen diplomacy needed be only for the church leaders, academics, and retired diplomats. Sometimes a child with simplicity and clarity can cut through all the jargon and political talk to get to reality. Samantha Smith was one such child.
In 1983 the Cold War was in one of its most intense stages with Ronald Reagan in the White House and the Soviet Union transitioning from the era of Leonid Brezhnev. New nuclear weapons were being developed with First-Strike capability. Amid this situation Samantha Smith, a schoolgirl from Manchester, Maine wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov, the new Premier of the Soviet Union:
“Dear Mr. Andropov, My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten 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 to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.”
For a while there was no response, but then her family learned that part of her letter had been published in Pravda, the Community Party’s newspaper. A few weeks later a long letter arrived to her home from Andropov. Andropov took her questions seriously and wrote about the hopes for peace between the Soviet Union and the U.S. He invited Samantha and her family to visit in the quest for peace and friendship.
This exchange of letters from a Maine schoolgirl and the head of the USSR caused quite a controversy in the U.S. Some called Samantha and her family “dupes for the Communists.” She appeared on many TV shows and news interviews. Some said she was a pawn of Soviet propaganda.
In July 1983 she and her parents spent two weeks touring the Soviet Union, including visiting a Soviet youth camp and meeting the first woman in space. She didn’t get to meet Andropov, but they spoke over the telephone. The Soviet and U.S. media followed every step of their journey.
When she got back she wrote a book Journey to the Soviet Union. She wrote, “I dedicate this book to the children of the world. They know that peace is always possible.” She later hosted a children’s show on the Disney Channel in which she interviewed Presidential candidates during the 1984 election. Called “America’s Youngest Ambassador,” Samantha participated in many peace-related activities around the world.
Tragically on August 25, 1985, when she was 13-years old, Samantha Smith and her father were killed in a plane crash in Maine. Though she had died, her action along with many similar efforts of citizen diplomacy played a major role in pushing disarmament to the front of the agenda for the U.S. and the Soviet Union. President Reagan and Andropov’s successor Mikhail Gorbachev the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, dealing with one of the most volatile trigger points for a possible nuclear war in Europe. After her death the Soviet Union issued a stamp in Samantha Smith’s honor.