History Recap / TintinTintinInTheLandOfTheSoviets

* PaperThinDisguise: A Russian spy disguises himself as a beggar, causing Tintin to take the man to a restaurant in pity. Snowy quickly figures out it's the same man who tried to attack Tintin earlier in the story.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: 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.

'''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.

!!Tropes

* 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.

* UsefulNotes/{{Cossacks}}: Tintin is captured by one when frozen in ice.

* ShoutOut:
** Tintin sings ''Au Clair De La Lune'' while fashioning a propeller from a tree using a pen knife all day and night.
** WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons: The album ''Tintin in Paris'' that Lisa grabs in the episode ''Husbands And Knives'' has Tintin and Snowy striking the same pose as they did on this album cover.

* AbortedArc: Tintin is sent off to Moscow and eventually gets there, but all kinds of events eventually lead him to other parts of Russia. Near the end of the story he tries to return to Moscow again, but after a failed attempt he just decides to go home. We also see him write his reports only once and he has to flee in the dead of night without taking all of his copies with him. So... in what way was his journalistic mission accomplished?

* 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?

** 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!

** Tintin has no quiff for the first few pages, until a car chase puts his hair into motion. He is also seen writing journalistic paperwork for the first and last time in the series, though he never seems to send it to his newspaper, because that same night he is attacked in his hotel room and has to flee, without taking all those pages along with him. Snowy has a strange beard and he and Tintin clearly seem able to understand what they are saying to each other.
** 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.

* TheSovietTwenties: The story was drawn in 1929.

* RussiansWithRifles: Tintin is under continuous attack by Russians with guns.

* RussiansWithRifles: Tintin is under continuous attack of Russians with guns.

* PaperThinDisguise: A Russian spy disguises himself as a beggar, causing Tintin to take the man to a restaurant on pity. Snowy quickly figures out it's the same man who tried to attack Tintin earlier in the story.

* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: Many Russian names end with ''-ski'', despite the fact that this more typical of Polish names.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Tintin freezes stuck in the ice, while Snowy doesn't, which is already strange in itself, but then Snowy manages to unfreeze Tintin again, who 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.

* DoNotExplainTheJoke: A lot of gags are exposed before they actually happen, for instance the banana peel gag.

* {{Cossacks}}: Tintin is captured by one when frozen in ice.

* ImperialChina: The Chinese torturers still have this look, down to the long pigtails.

* YellowPeril: Two ''extremely'' stereotypical-looking Chinese men show up to torture Tintin.

* 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, ''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.

''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. Storywise, it could be considered the ParvumOpus of all ''Tintin'' stories.

''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.

''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.

* BigBallOfViolence

* CrapsackWorld

* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The story is in black-and-white.

* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: 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.

* RandomEventsPlot: The "plot" is basically just Tintin wandering around and being attacked by DirtyCommunists.
* RedScare

* TheSovietTwenties

** WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons: The album ''Tintin in Paris'' that Lisa grabs in ''Husbands And Knives'' has Tintin and Snowy striking the same pose as they did on this album cover.

* YellowPeril: Two ''extremely'' stereotypical-looking Chinese men show up to torture Tintin

* CreatorProvincialism: Tintin arrives back on the train station of Brussels.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Tintin freezes stuck in the ice, while Snowy doesn't, which is already strange in itself, but then Snowy manages to unfreeze Tintin again, who is totally unaffected by the effects of being frozen for so long, even able to find the energy fight with the Russian cossack who carried him along.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: This was the case for several decades after its publication. Hergé felt this story was an OldShame and refused to have it redrawn or reprinted. It's not even considered part of the canon. Only in the 1970s, when several bootleg copies kept popping up, he finally decided to publish again.

* DirtyCommunists
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness

* ScoobyDooHoax: 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.

* YellowPeril: two ''extremely'' stereotypical-looking Chinese men show up to torture Tintin

* DidNotDoTheResearch: A minor example; one OGPU agent exclaims "By [[LeonTrotsky 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.

* AuthorTract Sort of. The tract was more Hergé's boss's, him having commissioned Hergé to write it as anti-Bolshevik propaganda for children.

* DidNotDoTheResearch A minor example; one OGPU agent exclaims "By [[LeonTrotsky 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.

* AuthorTract

* ScoobyDooHoax: 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.

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

* BananaPeel: A rare case of a banana peel being used to attempt assassination. [[DidNotDoTheReasearch Of course, bananas weren't really available in the Soviet Union at the time]]...