Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
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| Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (Les aventures de Tintin, reporter du "Petit Vingtième", au pays des Soviets) |
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Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (originally known as Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter du Petit "Vingtième", au pays des Soviets) is the first of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé. The series features young reporter Tintin as its hero.
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published for the first time in Le Petit Vingtième (the children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle) between 10 January 1929 and 11 May 1930, and appeared in album form in 1930.
The story is a political satire, expressing Hergé's distrust of the Soviet Union and poking fun at its claim to have a thriving economy. According to Benoît Peeters' book (Le monde d'Hergé), the only source used by Hergé to create his story was the book entitled Moscou sans voiles written by Joseph Douillet, a former Belgian consul in Soviet Russia. For such reasons, Hergé decided to withdraw the album from circulation in the 1930s. In 1973, a facsimile edition was launched, that immediately became a best-seller (100,000 copies sold only in that year).
It is the only early Tintin adventure which Hergé did not redraw or colourise in later years, and, as a result, looks and feels very different from the other books.
[edit] Storyline
Tintin and his dog Snowy are sent on a mission to Moscow by the newspaper he works for. The train is blown up by an agent of the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, and Tintin is blamed for the "accident". He is put in jail and even taken to a torture chamber from which he escapes, but wrings his way out by deceit and disguise. He then steals a car and goes through several adventures before arriving in Moscow. He finds that the Soviets are making people vote for their list, which is among the present three, by pointing guns at them, and that apparently productive factories are just hollow shells intended to fool foreign visitors (British communists) by burning hay to produce smoke and hitting metals to imitate the sound of machinery. He also finds out the Soviets only hand out bread to starving young people if they agree to call themselves communists, otherwise they beat them. Tintin discovers that the Moscow region is facing famine through lack of wheat – the bulk of the crop being exported for propaganda purposes – so the communist leadership is planning to pillage nearby farms. He manages to warn several kulaks of the approaching troops, but is again captured. Escaping across the snowy wastes, Tintin stumbles upon the secret cache of riches that Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky have stolen from the Soviet people (including an ample supply of wheat and also vodka and caviar). Armed with this knowledge, he turns towards home again, via Berlin and another encounter with Soviet agents. Returning to Brussels, he is greeted with great pomp by the rapturous public.
Le Petit Vingtième actually staged a triumphant return of "Tintin" and "Snowy" to the North Brussels train station on Thursday 8 May 1930, which was reported in the paper. Hergé was in attendance.
[edit] External links
- Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, in Tintinologist.org
| The Adventures of Tintin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creation of Tintin · Books, films, and media · Ideology of Tintin | ||||
| Characters: | Supporting · Minor · Complete list | |||
| Miscellany: | Hergé · Marlinspike · Captain Haddock's exclamations | |||
