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Russian diplomat: World needs no new Samantha Smith

In the early 1980’s Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old American girl, became a symbol of public diplomacy in the Cold War

Samantha Smith ITAR-TASS/Forokhronika/TASS

Samantha Smith

© ITAR-TASS/Forokhronika/TASS

ARTEK (Crimea), July 6. /TASS/. Modern children live in the world without borders, which is completely different from the world Samantha Smith lived in, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

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In the early 1980’s Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old American girl, became a symbol of public diplomacy in the Cold War. In 1982 she wrote a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking him if the USSR really wanted to conquer the United States. Andropov invited the girl and her family to the Soviet Union. She visited Moscow, Leningrad and the Artek summer camp. In 1985

she was killed in a plane crush.

"This story [of Samantha Smith] had two sides. It was bright, interesting, sensational, but also tragic. It showed how the world was split, how far from each other the two poles were. Today we live in a completely different world, which is based on completely different ideology," said Zakharova who is currently visiting Artek.

Children from different countries are spending vacation in the Artek summer camp and this number is growing, the camp’s head Aleksey Kasprzhak said. "This year we are planning to receive about 1,600 people including children from the United States," he added.

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