MOSCOW -- A Soviet artist who turned to pornography because he did not have 'even a shade of talent' has been sentenced to two years imprisonment for peddling smut, the Tass news agency said Thursday.
Vyacheslav Sysoyev, 45, was arrested in March.
He had been in hiding since 1979 after authorities summoned him to explain why he was collecting allegedly pornographic literature and pictures.
Tass said Sysoyev over the past few years 'established contacts with diplomats and journalists from the United States and several western countries and regularly received from them pornographic journals, and then made transparencies from them.'
At the time of the police raid on his apartment, Tass said searchers uncovered more than 1,000 transparencies and other illicit materials, which he used to make paintings.
After his arrest, Tass said even Sysoyev's best friend refused to buy his work because of the 'absence of even a shade of talent in the paintings.'
Under Soviet law, Sysoyev could have received a jail term of three years and a 100-ruble fine.
Tass said although Sysoyev was depicted in the West as a 'freedom fighter persecuted by Soviet authorities for his political views,' he was in reality nothing more than 'a peddler of pornography.'
