Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

Blurb

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle as anti-communist propaganda for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from January 1929 to May 1930. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Soviet Union to report on the policies of Joseph Stalin's Bolshevik government. Tintin's intent to expose the regime's secrets prompts agents from the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, to hunt him down with the intent to kill.
Bolstered by publicity stunts, Land of the Soviets was a commercial success, and appeared in book form shortly after its conclusion. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Tintin in the Congo, and the series became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. He later came to regret the poorly researched, propagandist debut story, and prevented its republication until 1973; it is the only completed Tintin story not to have appeared in colour.