PROABLY LATE 1980S

Mrs. Thatcher visited the USSR in late March 1987. She was warmly received by the people of the country whose press had coined her ‘The Iron Lady’ a decade before. Whilst there she was granted unprecedented freedom to move and speak as she wished. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of these unheard of freedoms came on 31 March when the Prime Minister was interviewed by Boris Kalyagin for Russian television; during which interview Mrs. Thatcher was allowed to speak freely for forty-five minutes without censorship. This visit represented a key moment in East-West relations and built on the foundations of the strong personal rapport that Mrs. Thatcher had established with Mr. Gorbachev at Chequers in December 1984 when Mr. Gorbachev had visited Britain at the invitation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, prior to his becoming leader of the USSR in 1985. Their rapport would play no small part in ending the Cold War.

Whilst these dolls may be of slightly later date, it is likely that they would have been a political gift either during Mrs. Thatcher's time in power or shortly after, such as when she was visited by Boris Yeltsin in April 1990.