The Michigan Daily - Saturday, July 9, 1983 - Page 9
Soviets welcome visiting U.S. schoolgirl
MOSCOW (AP) - An American schoolgirl invited
to the Soviet Union by President Yuri Andropov
greeted Moscovites with a few words of Russian
yesterday, gave her autograph to Soviet reporters
and rode up and down the elevator at her hotel.
Soviet children presented 11-year-old Samantha
Smith bouquets of flowers when she arrived and a
black limousine whisked her and her parents off to
the Sovietskaya Hotel, where the Soviet government
frequently lodges important guests.
THE SOVIET news agency Tass called Samantha
"sociable and jovial"- and said she greeted
Moscovites by saying "Zdravstkvuite," hello, and
"spasibo," thank you.
Samantha of Manchester, Maine, said on arrival at
the airport that she was carrying a "secret" gift for
the 69-year-old Soviet leader and hoped to deliver it to
him in person.
It has not been announced whether Samantha will
meet Andropov. He invited her to visit after she wrote
to him this spring, at her mother's suggestion, asking
if he would "vote to have a war or not."
HER LETTER was printed in the official Com-
munist Party newspaper Pravda on April 11, and An-
dropov responded with a two-page letter assuring her
of Moscow's peaceful intentions and inviting her and
her parents on a two-week expenses-paid visit to see
the country for themselves.
Samantha said she felt "great" about fulfilling her
dream of traveling to the Soviet Union, there were no
firm plans for meeting with Andropov. .
"It just depnds," she said. The Soviet leader post-
poned a meeting with West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl this week because of ill health.
SAMANTHA was accompanied by her father, Ar-
thur Smith, an English professor at the University fo
Maine-Augusta, and her mother, Jane. The family
rested after their nine-hour flight from Montreal,
then visited Moscow's Pupper Theater.
If she does meet Andropov, she said she will ask
him: "Do you promise me the Soviet Union will never
start a war?"
"The Americans are not going to start a war,
either. So why are we still making all these bombs
and pointing them at each other?" she told reporters.
SAMANTHA'S MOTHER, said their daughter is a
"good example of American youth and it will be good
for Russians to meet her."
The Smiths were greeted by 10 Soviet boys and girls
wearing white tops, red kerchiefs and navy shorts or
skirts of the Young Pioneers, the Communist youth
group. A police-escorted black Chaika, limousines
usually reserved for the Soviet elite, took the family
to the hotel, where rooms cost $70 to $100 a night.
Tass said Samantha's parents wanted to rest after
their trip, but the girl looked around the hotel and
rode the elevator instead.
Later, the family was received at the state-run Un-
ion of Societies of Friendship with Peoples of foreign
countries, which is paying for their trip, including
about $10,000 for first-class air tickets.
The Soviet government newspaper Izvestia had a
story and photograph about Samantha's arrival
prominently displayed on the back page. A nightly,
15-minute television program of political news
around the world featured her arrival as the lead
item.
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