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In July 1983, a ten-year old American girl, Samantha Smith, was invited to the Soviet Union by Yuri Andropov himself. After reading her worried letter on the future of the planet, the Soviet chairman invited her to see by herself that the USSR did not want to start any nuclear war. The whole operation was widely covered by the Soviet media which did their best to keep the memory of the event alive, especially after the tragic death of the American girl in 1985. By inviting Samantha to be the first representative of the "childhood diplomacy" policy, the Soviet authorities had in mind complex objectives which went beyond a simple propaganda operation for foreign countries. The goal was also, and maybe above all, to help reform an anti-American propaganda machine which had become too inefficient, especially with the youth. The operation was quite successful, but the chairman’s sickness, and more importantly, the tragic events of September 1983 which brought the two superpowers to the edge of the nuclear abyss, prevented Moscow from fully exploiting this operation. However, the memory of Samantha’s visit still remains alive today and for some contributes to the communist regime’s nostalgia.