Samantha Smith was an American high school student who visited the Soviet Union in 1983 as part of an international cultural exchange program. Her trip attracted much attention from the world press, as she was the first unofficial U.S. envoy to the USSR after the end of the Cold War. Smith became famous for her letter to the Secretary General of UNESCO, in which she asked about peace between the U.S. and the USSR. During her stay in the Soviet Union, Samantha Smith visited several cities and met with many government officials and ordinary citizens of the USSR. As a result of her trip, Smith became a symbol of international dialogue and the goodwill between the peoples of the U.S. and the USSR. Her life was cut tragically short: in August 1985, she died in a car accident in Maine.
Return visit.
Katya Lycheva, a Soviet schoolgirl, participated in the international cultural exchange program “Mission of Peace” in 1986 and visited the United States. She was one of 10 Soviet schoolchildren chosen from thousands of applications to participate in the program, which was organized by the American Association of Schools. The goal of the program was to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and exchange cultural experiences. Katya Lycheva’s visit also received much attention in the world media, as a symbol of dialogue and understanding between the two countries that were on opposite sides of the Cold War.