History Recap / TintinTintinInTheLandOfTheSoviets

* FrigidWaterIsHarmless: Tintin gets frozen stuck in the ice after he falls into icy water. When Snowy manages to unfreeze him, he is totally unaffected by the effects of being frozen for so long, and is even able to find the energy to fight with the Russian cossack who carried him along.

* HarmlessFreezing: Tintin freezes stuck in the ice after he falls into icy water. When Snowy manages to unfreeze him, he is totally unaffected by the effects of being frozen for so long, even able to find the energy to fight with the Russian cossack who carried him along.

Last book to be published in English (in 1989).

* CrapsackWorld: Soviet Russia is depicted as a horrible, poor dictatorship where all of Communism is apparently a fraud.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology and ArtisticLicenseEngineering: Tintin manages to fashion a propeller for a plane by cutting it with a pen knife from a tree. After spending a whole day and night doing this, he simply puts it on the plane and flies away. Errr... didn't he need to sleep at one point, especially considering he has to concentrate on keeping a plane in the air?
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: Herge depicts the communist economy as literally phony, with people just banging on iron to produce factory sounds and burning hay to provide factory smoke. Also he refers to bananas, Shell petrol and Huntley & Palmers biscuits, all of which didn't exist in the USSR at that time.

* BearTrap: Tiger@Snowy gets caught in a wolf trap which rips off half of his costume, [[TheFreelanceShameSquad much to the amusement of the other animals]].

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: This entire story is obviously dated. The UsefulNotes/SovietUnion doesn't exist anymore, for starters. The story was also produced prior to the First Five Year Plan after which (via hidious suffering) Soviet industry really was as widespread and productive as the characters in the story attempt to imply with a ScoobyDooHoax.

''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 UsefulNotes/SovietUnion 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.

''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 OldShame.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography:
** Soviet Russia seems to be nothing more than some dreary buildings and tundra. Hergé based all his knowledge about the country on one book, ''[[https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2BEAAAAIAAJ Moscou Unveiled]]'' by a Belgian Soviet diplomat named Joseph Douillet, which was a heavy anti-Soviet propaganda piece. Several scenes in the Tintin story are lifted directly from this book.

%% FakeTown: Tintin sees a group of English communists being shown Soviet factories that appear to be working at full speed. From where he is, he can see that the factories are façades with people burning wet straw and banging on sheet metal to make it look like the factories are running at all.

* PotemkinVillage: Tintin sees a group of English communists being shown Soviet factories that appear to be working at full speed. From where he is, he can see that the factories are façades with people burning wet straw and banging on sheet metal to make it look like the factories are running at all.

** In terms of story, the album is more a RandomEventsPlot and a propaganda piece full of SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped lectures about the evilness and phoniness of Soviet communism. Many gags are set up and told in a very slow exposition that doesn't surprise the reader when they finally happen.

** Another example are the Chinese torturers who just happen to be working for Soviet policemen in Russia. HilariousInHindsight though is the fact that only 20 years later, China would indeed become a Communist country!
*** Chinese workers stranded in Russia [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_in_the_Russian_Revolution_and_in_the_Russian_Civil_War participed to the Civil War]].

By the time of World war II at the latest Herge had effectively disowned the book, and refused to allow it to be reissued when he began redrawing the books in colour. As such ''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.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: As Herge despised the story and refused to republish it, for many years only the original 1930's editions remained available in circulation and at very high prices; notably this led many fans to visit the Bibliothèque Nationale in order to read the copy held there. Fan demand finally led to a tiny run of 500 being published in 1969 but this did nothing to decrease demand and by the 1970's a number of bootleg editions were being produced and sold. Finally in 1973 it would be reprinted in the Archives Hergé collection. With bootlegs still circulating Casterman finally produced a facsimile edition in 1981. English readers had to wait until 1989 to finally read the book in an official edition.

''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.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: This entire story is obviously dated. The UsefulNotes/SovietUnion doesn't exist anymore, for starters.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: This entire story is obviously dated. Soviet Russia doesn't exist anymore, for starters.

* TimeMarchesOn: This entire story is obviously dated. Soviet Russia doesn't exist anymore, for starters.

* SheepInWolfsClothing: Snowy disguises himself as a tiger to scare the Russian guards away.

* HandcarPursuit

* InscrutableOriental: Tintin is brought to a torture cellar where he will be tortured by two emotionless Chinese tortureres.