Andropov's Gamble: Samantha Smith and Soviet Soft Power
Journal: Journal of Russian American Studies
Year: 2020

On a November evening in 1982, a ten-year-old fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine-population just above two thousand-became concerned about world peace under the impression of news stories about the Soviet nuclear threat. To alleviate her daughter's fears, Jane Smith sat down with Samantha to read a Time magazine article about Yuri Andropov who had just succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the CPSU. The introductory paragraph read: "When Joseph Conrad wrote about the place, he calle