Tintin in the Land of the Soviets — First story of The Adventures of Tintin
The first Tintin story, commissioned as anti-communist satire, launched one of the most influential Franco-Belgian comics series of the 20th century.
Key Facts
- Publisher
- Éditions du Petit Vingtième
- Serialisation period
- January 1929 to May 1930
- Commissioned by
- Le Vingtième Siècle (Belgian newspaper)
- First official republication
- 1969
- Colour version produced
- No — only completed Tintin story not redrawn in colour
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, seeking anti-communist content for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, commissioned cartoonist Hergé to create a satirical story depicting life under Stalin's Soviet government.
Hergé serialised Tintin in the Land of the Soviets weekly from January 1929 to May 1930, following young reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy as they travel to the USSR and are hunted by the secret police. The collected volume was published in 1930 by Éditions du Petit Vingtième and was a commercial success in Belgium, France, and Switzerland.
The story launched The Adventures of Tintin series, which became central to the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. Hergé later considered the work crude and declined to produce a colour version; damage to original plates restricted republication for decades, with an authorised edition finally appearing in 1969 and subsequent translations into multiple languages.