Samantha Smith grew up during the Cold War. It was a time when The Soviet Union and the United States were enemies. There was the threat of a nuclear war.

Samantha was worried about this threat. She wanted peace. In 1982, when she was only ten years old, Samantha wrote a letter to a new leader in the Soviet Union. His name was Yuri Andropov. Her letter said:

Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worry 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.

Sincerely,

Samantha Smith

Samantha’s letter was published in a Soviet newspaper. Her words meant a lot to the new leader. He said that she was brave and honest. He also invited Samantha and her family to visit the Soviet Union. Their trip got a lot of attention. Samantha was called “America’s Youngest Ambassador.”

When Samantha came home she said that people in the Soviet Union did not seem very different from people in America. She spoke about her trip and wrote a book about her experiences. She suggested that the leaders of the two countries “exchange granddaughters for two weeks every year, because a leader would not want to bomb a country that his granddaughter was visiting.”

Samantha sadly died in a plane crash a few years after her trip. But even in her short life she made a big difference. She helped the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. After she died, the Soviet government created a postage stamp with her picture on it. They also named a diamond and an asteroid after her. Her mother created the Samantha Smith Foundation, which promotes peace and friendships between international children.