Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

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 satire for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialized weekly from January 1929 to May 1930, before being published in a collected volume in 1930.

The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent from Brussels 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.

En route to Moscow, an agent of the OGPU sabotages the train and declares the reporter to be a "dirty little bourgeois." The Berlin Police indirectly 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.

Tintin witnesses a local election, where the Bolsheviks threaten the voters to ensure their own victory; when they try to arrest him, he dresses as a ghost to scare them away. Tintin attempts to make his way out of the Soviet Union, but the Bolsheviks pursue and arrest him, then threaten him with torture. Escaping his captors, Tintin reaches Moscow, remarking that the Bolsheviks have turned it into "a stinking slum". He and Snowy observe a government official handing out bread to homeless Marxists but denying it to their opponents; Snowy steals a loaf and gives it to a starving boy.

Spying on a secret Bolshevik meeting, Tintin learns that all the Soviet grain is being exported abroad for propaganda purposes, leaving the people starving, and that the government plans to "organize an expedition against the kulaks, the rich peasants, and force them at gunpoint to give us their corn."

Tintin infiltrates the Red Army and warns some of the kulaks to hide their grain, but the army catches him and sentences him to death by firing squad. By planting blanks in the soldiers' rifles, Tintin fakes his death and is able to make his way into the snowy wilderness, where he discovers an underground Bolshevik hideaway in a haunted house. A Bolshevik then captures him and informs him, "You're in the hideout where Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from the people!"

With Snowy's help, Tintin escapes, commandeers a plane, and flies into the night. The plane crashes, but Tintin fashions a new propeller from a tree using a penknife, and continues to Berlin. The OGPU agents appear and lock Tintin in a dungeon, but he escapes with the aid of Snowy, who has dressed himself in a tiger costume.

The last OGPU agent attempts to kidnap Tintin again, but this attempt is foiled, leaving the agent threatening, "We'll blow up all the capitals of Europe with dynamite!"

Tintin returns to Brussels amidst a huge popular reception.