Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

File Type : PDF

Language : English

Story : Tintin, a reporter for Le Petit Vingtième, is sent with his dog Snowy on an assignment to the Soviet Union, departing from Brussels. En route to Moscow, an agent of the OGPU - the Soviet secret police - sabotages the train and declares the reporter to be a "dirty little bourgeois". The Berlin Police blame Tintin for the bombing but he escapes to the border of the Soviet Union. Following closely, the OGPU agent finds Tintin and brings him before the local Commissar's office, instructing the Commissar to make the reporter "disappear ... accidentally". Escaping again, Tintin finds "how the Soviets fool the poor idiots who still believe in a Red Paradise" by burning bundles of straw and clanging metal in order to trick visiting English Marxists into believing that non-operational Soviet factories are productive.

In observing a Soviet election, Tintin finds that the Communists coerce people to vote for their list by pointing guns at them, and that apparently productive factories are just hollow shells intended to fool British communists by burning hay to produce smoke and hitting large sheets of corrugated iron to imitate the sound of machinery. In wandering the streets of Moscow, he discovers that Soviet authorities hand out bread to starving children only if they declare themselves Communists; if they fail to do so, the children are beaten and refused food. Due to the relegation of the bulk of Russia's wheat crop to export, so as to maintain the illusion that Russia is wealthy and can therefore afford to send huge quantities away, Moscow is experiencing severe famine. Thus, the Communist leadership plans to pillage productive farms. Tintin manages to save several kulaks by warning them of the approaching troops, but is again captured when he attracts the attention of a military officer.