Tintin/Recap/Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is the first Tintin story, published in the magazine Le Petit Vingtième in the years 1929 and 1930. The young reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy are sent by the newspaper to the Soviet Union to gather material to write articles about the conditions under the Bolshevik government. What follows is a long tirade of anti-communist propaganda: Tintin wanders around Russia uncovering the oppression and the dirty secrets of the government while being attacked by evil government officials every step of the way.

As you can imagine, research for this story was minimal; Hergé had only one written source for information when writing it. Hergé himself would later think of the story as his Old Shame.

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is the only book in the series that has never been colourised or redrawn. As a result, it sticks out like a sore thumb if you're otherwise only familiar with the later, redrawn versions of Tintin's early adventures.

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Tropes

• Author Tract: Sort of. The tract was more Hergé's boss's, him having commissioned Hergé to write it as anti-Bolshevik propaganda for children.
• Banana Peel: A rare case of a banana peel being used to attempt assassination. Of course, bananas weren't really available in the Soviet Union at the time...
• Big Ball of Violence
• Crapsack World
• Did Not Do the Research: A minor example; one OGPU agent exclaims "By Trotsky", but Trotsky had been declared an enemy of the state and exiled by the time of writing. It's therefore unlikely that a character so symbolic of the dogmatic Soviet order would use his name in such a way.
  • The work in general also shows a very crude picture of the Soviet Union.
• Dirty Communists
• Early Installment Weirdness
• Handcar Pursuit
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Actually averted, which would later become very rare for the series. Tintin is explicitly being sent to Russia as a reporter, and we even see him talking to his boss about sending in articles.
• Random Events Plot: The "plot" is basically just Tintin wandering around and being attacked by Dirty Communists.
• Red Scare
• The Soviet Twenties
• Scooby-Doo Hoax: The Bolsheviks use one of these to scare people away from their hidden stash of stolen goods. Tintin himself also dresses up as a Bedsheet Ghost to scare away his attackers at one point.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Tintin is arrested at one point for blowing up a traincar and killing 218 people (actually an attempt to assassinate him). After he escapes, it is never mentioned or referenced again.
• Yellow Peril: two extremely stereotypical-looking Chinese men show up to torture Tintin