Life was exciting for Yousuf and Estrellita, as they travelled to many places. In the 1960s, more and more of the world became the professional home of Karsh of Ottawa.
In April 1963, they travelled to Russia. At that time, the communist party was in power. The government did not have many contacts with non-communist governments. Relations were very tense between the U.S. and Russia (then called the U.S.S.R.) during this period, known as the Cold War. However, Yousuf was a Canadian photographer, and not a citizen of the United States. He was the first photographer from the Western world to be allowed to photograph important Soviet Russians. People excitedly awaited Yousuf’s photographs.
Yousuf made a famous portrait of the head of the government, Chairman Nikita Khrushchev. In the photograph, Khrushchev seems a little fierce, but he also has twinkly eyes and a warm smile. He looks like an Arctic explorer dressed in a great fur coat.
The fur coat was Yousuf’s idea. But April can be hot in Russia, and Khrushchev’s aides were against using the heavy coat. However, Khrushchev agreed to put the coat on. Before the historic photograph was taken, Khrushchev warned, “Be quick, or this snow leopard will devour me.”
The Russians gave Estrellita a large matrushka doll, a wooden doll with fifteen smaller ones inside. “I am a child about dolls,” Estrellita laughed. She presented the lovely doll to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa. There, sick children and their visitors can marvel at the brightly painted dolls, each one, from the smallest to the largest, different from her sisters.
Estrellita and the Soviet minister of culture with a matrushka doll