IT TAKES THREE TO TANGO: The true story of a fictitious romance

An epistolary tale of non-conformist art, KGB hounds, and escape from Soviet Ukraine. 

A conversation with 

Natalka Husar, a celebrated Canadian Artist
Lidia Lykhach, director of Rodovid Press
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, a cultural anthropologist, director of CIUS

Hosted by 
Taras Koznarsky, director, Danylo Husar Struk Program for Ukrainian Literature

November 18th, 2025
6 p.m.-8 p.m.
Location: Father Madden Hall, Carr Hall, 100 St Joseph St, Toronto

Fresh out of highschool, a young aspiring artist, Natalka arrives in Soviet Ukraine, the homeland of her displaced parents. There she meets an already famous artist, Ivan Ostafiychuk. It is 1969. The Cold War is raging. The two engage in letter writing, against the backdrop of the KGB crackdown on Ukrainian artists and intellectuals, for Ivan wants to escape the Soviet regime. For several years, letters circulated across the ocean as the two artists staged a long-distance romance to convince secret services that they were in love and wanted to marry. Did they succeed in this pursuit? Did they fall in love? Did Ivan escape the KGB surveillance and the Soviet Union? What happened to this affair, almost bordering on thriller? 

Meet Natalka Husar in person to hear the story. Speak with scholars who study Ukraine and KGB surveillance. Read the newly published book containing Ivan’s letters.

The book will be available to purchase at the event, or can be ordered on the publisher's website. 

Natalka Husar is a Canadian artist born in New Jersey to Ukrainian DP parents. 

Her themes in painting since the late 1970s are of Ukrainian identities in displacement, haunted by an obliterated homeland and the fates of those left behind.  In the last 35 years, she has used the concept of post-Soviet Ukraine as a metaphorical stage on which a cast of her fictive characters express a gamut of desires, including self-reinvention, bearing the scars of Soviet era Russian colonialism. Husar’s work is represented in the National Gallery of Canada and numerous public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, where one of her paintings is currently on view. 

Panelists: 

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, Professor and Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, and the Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

Lidia Lykhach, Director of Rodovid Press.

Taras Koznarsky, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, University of Toronto, and Director of the Danylo Struk Programme in Ukrainian Literature, CIUS, University of Alberta

Watch the recording:

Event hosted by the Danylo Husar Struk Program for Ukrainian Literature, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. In collaboration with Kontakt Toronto.