Parajanov served four years out of his five-year sentence, and later credited his early release to the efforts of the French Surrealist poet and novelist Louis Aragon, the Russian poet Elsa Triolet (Aragon's wife), and the American writer John Updike. His early release was authorized by Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presumably as a consequence of Brezhnev's chance meeting with Aragon and Triolet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. When asked by Brezhnev if he could be of any assistance, Aragon requested the release of Parajanov, which was effected by December 1977.