Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

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On 10 January 1929, a young reporter boarded a train from Brussels to Moscow

accompanied by his dog, Snowy. It was the start of Tintin's first great adventure and the
beginning of Hergé's career. The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter for "Le Petit Vingtième",
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, was published as a book in 1930. That year marks the
birth of a legend and the start of one of the most engaging relationships between fiction
and reality, of the twentieth century.

Now a very rare book - The first counterfeiting

This adventure was issued in album form and the first 500 copies were numbered and
signed by "Tintin et Milou". The first edition of this comic book is now very rare and costs
a fortune! With the exception of a reissue in 1969 for the personal use of Hergé, again
limited to 500 copies, more than forty years elapsed before this adventure was published
again in 1973.

Tintin, famous reporter with Le Petit Vingtième, departs for the USSR with his faithful
friend Snowy. He is on a mission to find out, and report to his young readers back home,
the state of affairs in Soviet Russia. This adventure was the birth of a legend and the first
editions of the book have themselves achieved legendary status among collectors.

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A loyal companion from the beginning
From the outset, Snowy is there at his master's heel. Unusually for a dog however, he
thinks and speaks like a human being, and comes to Tintin's aid time and time again.

His loyalty and sincerity never fail to raise a smile.

Top reporter
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These pictures are notable for a simple yet amazing fact: they are the first and only time
that Tintin the famous reporter is shown to be writing a newspaper article!

Tintin's exploits, nevertheless, will become a kind of first hand reporting followed not
only by readers of Le Petit Vingtième, but by millions of fans worldwide.

A rollercoaster
From an artistic perspective, Hergé's drawings of Tintin and Snowy were still in
embryonic stage, and would radically develop in future adventures.

This first adventure also lacks any kind of plot, as Hergé improvised with relentless action
scene after scene. Readers traverse Russia at breakneck speed on a rollercoaster ride of
boats, planes, trains and automobiles.

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The animals
Animals play an important role in Tintin's adventures. During an interview with the
French writer Numa Sadoul, Hergé remarked.

"I really admired Benjamin Rabier. His work was engraved so deeply in my memory that I
must have been heavily influenced by it, while drawing my animals

Hergé's style evolves

Keen readers of the first Tintin book will be able to spot certain scenes that Hergé would
later enhance for other adventures.

These frames illustrate this evolution of style between similar scenes from Land of the
Soviets and Red Rackham's Treasure.

An historic work

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Casterman delayed for a long time before publishing further editions of this story. They
worried that although it was obviously historical, the views expressed in the story were
somewhat dated, and it was set in an obscure era unknown to young readers.
Nevertheless, later publications of this adventure would sell hundreds of thousands of
copies.

The missing page

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is the only one of Tintin's adventures which has been
published with a page missing!Browse a modern copy of this book and you'll notice a
page missing between pages 101 and 102. Not to worry, as we've reproduced it here for
your inspection! This elusive page was included in the original publication of the story in
Le Petit Vingtième, but was left out of the 1930 book edition.

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