BTW, even though porn is illegal in Russia, it is still pretty openly sold.
> Thursday, 11 July, 2002, 15:27 GMT 16:27 UK (BBC)
> Russian satirist sued over 'gay Stalin'
>
> Walking Together destroys Sorokin's books
> Local prosecutors in Moscow have begun a criminal action against a Russian
> author who wrote about a fictional homosexual relationship between Stalin
> and Khrushchev.
> Sorokin's novels frequently feature elements of the grotesque
> Vladimir Sorokin, a surreal novelist who is one of Russia's rising
> literary stars, is accused of spreading pornography with his novel Blue
> Bacon Fat.
> The charges were brought after a youth group loyal to President Vladimir
> Putin protested about the book, publicly destroying copies in the centre
> of Moscow.
> Mr Sorokin denies being a pornographer and accuses his detractors of being
> "post-Communists".
> Difference of opinion
> The Moscow Prosecutor's Office said it had taken the action after
> concluding that Blue Bacon Fat - which puns on the word "blue", a common
> Russian slang word for homosexual - contained pornographic material.
> Interviewed earlier by the BBC, Mr Sorokin said he was prepared to fight
> any court case.
> "There's a big difference between pornographers and writers," he said.
> "The pornographer aims to help the reader achieve an erection but the
> writer's task is to provide the writer with aesthetic pleasure."
> 'Censorship'
> A deputy head of administration in the government, Alexei Volin, expressed
> regret at the Moscow prosecutors' decision on Wednesday.
> "History has taught us that persistent attempts on the part of law
> enforcement agencies and the progressive public to make writers stop
> writing wrongly never do any good," he said.
> Mr Sorokin's book enraged members of Walking Together, a youth group which
> wears tee-shirts bearing President Putin's portrait.
> In June, they publicly ripped up copies of Blue Bacon Fat in central
> Moscow and threw them down a mock-up of a toilet bowl.
> Stalin, never punished for his crimes, is still revered by many in
> Russia
> Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Fund which monitors freedom
> of speech in Russia, said the criminal case amounted to censorship.
> "The problem is not whether or not Sorokin's books contain foul language,"
> he said, "but that the criminal prosecution of any writer is very
> dangerous from the point of view of freedom of the press."
> Before eventually succeeding Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev served as an
> official under the Soviet dictator, who had millions of people murdered
> over his three decades in power.
> Since coming to power in 2000, Mr Putin has been accused of seeking to
> rehabilitate Stalin, at one point unveiling a bust to him as a war leader.
>
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