Lycheva Ekaterina Aleksandrovna - Soviet “dove of peace”. In 1986, at the age of eleven, she became one of the most popular students on the planet, visiting the United States of America.
Biography
Her parents were scientists and did not have high-ranking relatives in the government. Although there were a lot of rumors about it. Lycheva Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, whose biography is described in this article, studied at Moscow special school No. 4 (with a bias in English). Now this is school number 1260.
In 1988, she and her family moved to Paris. Since 1995, she worked at the Paris Center for Investment Promotion. She returned to her homeland in 2000. She worked in the Ministry of Labor and Social Development of the Russian Federation. She basically does not attend television show programs and refuses to give interviews to the central media. But at times it makes an exception for regional newspapers.
Now Lycheva Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, whose photo is in this article, is working as the vice president of AvtoVAZ.
Peace mission
After Samantha Smith, who visited the Soviet Union in 1983, died in 1985, an organization called Children as Peacemakers proposed a return visit to the United States for a Soviet schoolgirl. The Soviet side was given freedom of choice, but set a couple of conditions: the girl should not be older than Samantha and participate in the struggle for peace.
Several thousand schoolgirls were watched, in the end they chose Katya. From March 21 to April 4, 1986, Lycheva Ekaterina Aleksandrovna (Goodwill Ambassador), along with an American schoolgirl Star Row from San Francisco, traveled around America promoting peace.
They visited New York, Chicago, Washington, visited NASA Space Center, UN headquarters, Disneyland. They were received by city mayors and even American President Ronald Reagan. When they were brought to McDonalds, the hype in the circles of journalists was an unprecedented amount.
The trip did not go calmly and smoothly. Then there was no trust between the USSR and the USA. Some American journalists dreamed of making a sensation - exposing Katya as a “Moscow propaganda project”. Soviet journalists did not lag behind them. The tour was widely covered in the domestic press, and Ekaterina Alexandrovna Lycheva became popular in the USSR. Then she and her parents moved to France, and interest in her person disappeared.
After the mission
Katya was very popular after returning from the USA. She was invited to participate in many social events, she received letters in bags. And all this led to the fact that she had virtually no free time. In 1986 and 1987 She starred in two films: "How at home, how are you?" and Lermontov. And after that, her name disappeared from the country's chronicles. There were even rumors in the Union that Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Lycheva married a sheikh and lives in a harem.
The girl really left the country in 1988 because her mother, Marina Lycheva, received a French scholarship and moved to France with her family. There, Katya studied at the Sorbonne, where she received two higher educations: legal and economic.
Now only some peers remember it - schoolchildren of the eighties. Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Lycheva herself, whose photo you can see in this article, does not like to remember this episode from her childhood.
Katya's memories of America
Katya recalls that President Reagan shook her hand, in response she gave him a toy that children from the USSR made who wanted peace. Reagan wished Katya and her mother to have a great time in the States and said that he envied them because they attended the circus, and he did not have time to go there.
Lycheva, Ekaterina Alexandrovna, spoke enthusiastically about the McDonald's, at the entrance to which they were met by the clown and sat at the table. They brought the Big Mac and french fries. Katya tried to bite off a piece of the sandwich, but when she brought it to her mouth, the journalists began to click their cameras, embarrassing the girl. So she didn’t manage to eat Big Mac. But then she ate potatoes, which she ate all, not paying attention to pesky journalists.
Returning to her homeland, the girl said that she worked in America for peace. She did not know that it would be so hard, but now she understands that it was impossible to do without her.