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Les Aventures de Tintin: Tintin au Pays des Soviets (French Edition of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets)

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The value of "Tintin au Pays des Soviets" ("Tintin in the Land of the Soviets") is as much historical as it is literary since this is the first of Les Aventures de Tintin created by Hergé. The date is January 10, 1929 and in Brussels the intrepid young reporter for "Le Petit Vingtième" Tintin and his dog Milou board a train for Moscow. There Tintin spends his time denouncing the methods of the Communist Party and then avoiding attempts by the Soviet secret police to silence him for his views. By the time Tintin makes it back home word of his exploits has arrived ahead of him and he is greeted as a hero.

Today "Tintin au Pays des Soviets" constitutes something of a false start for Hergé's series. The seven volume collection of the Three-in-One series of "The Adventures of Tintin," which is probably the most common way for today's readers to get a hold of the Tintin stories, begins with the third adventures, "Tintin Au America." Both this story and "Tintin Au Congo" are left out of the "official" canon, the former because of the suspect ideology and the latter because of the implicit racism. What emerges in the other eighteen Tintin tales is more pure storytelling that takes place in a created world that bears only an allegorical relationship to the real world. Besides, Tintin does not even have his trademark tuft of hair at this point.

Consequently, Tintin fans who track down the first couple of adventures will need to take both tales with a grain of salt. Whereas the other stories tend to stand on their own, the first two are clearly dated. "Tintin au Pays des Soviets" especially requires commentary or annotation that reveals exactly what was going on in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s that Hergé and the left found necessary to attack, even in a comic book adventure. I know that Hergé was working for "Le Petit Vingtième," an anti-Communist church-run newspaper, but I also know that he also apologized for this book later in life because he had never actually visited the Soviet Union and had based his story on one book, which was apparently written for propaganda purposes.

Consequently, it is fairly safe to say that this particular Tintin adventure is really not intended for children until they are old enough to understand the politics of the time in which it was written. It might be ironic that you should read the first couple of Tintin adventures after you have read the other eighteen, but that is probably the best way to proceed.