Trivia / Tintin - Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

• Accidentally-Correct Writing:
  • While nearly everything about the Soviet Union's depiction in this story is laughably inaccurate (due to the fact that Hergé never visited the country and lifted entire scenes from a popular anti-communist tract), one thing that actually was Truth in Television (albeit probably exaggerated) was the "election" seen halfway through the story, with several former Soviet citizens attesting in later years that implied and even open threats of violence toward voters weren't too out of the ordinary. Obviously the open stuff would have been the exception rather than the norm given the Soviets' more subtle way of purging.
  • In a retrospective example, the Soviet officials are seen holding a crowd of voters at gunpoint and then declaring that, since none of them have said otherwise, their votes will all be counted for the Communist Party. In reality, the Soviets did have a law stating that, unless voters cast a ballot to the contrary, they would be assumed as supporting the Communists. However, said law wasn't implemented until a few years after the story finished publication, and even then, it wasn't usually enforced at gunpoint. They had more subtle ways of enforcing such a policy. ^note In Soviet elections, the ballot was already largely filled out for the voter with the (Communist or Communist-aligned) candidate the only person on the ballot, and the Soviet government bent over backwards to entice people to vote. The voter just had to drop it into the ballot box. There was a booth for those who wanted to vote otherwise. The catch was that people taking advantage of the secret ballot to write in another candidate were caught out as taking advantage of the secret ballot to write for an unapproved candidate and were marked for secret police scrutiny. The people's workaround for this was to just not show up to vote if the candidate was unpalatable — if the candidate couldn't get a majority of raw turnout, it was still seen as a rejection of the candidate.
• Bury Your Art: Hergé regretted making this comic and refused to let it be republished. He eventually gave in and let it be reprinted in 1973, but only because there were so many bootleg copies already out there. Even though he let it be republished, he still refused to redraw and color the book like he had done with many of his older stories.
• Creator Backlash: Not exactly what Hergé would call his favorite Tintin strip.
• First Appearance: As the first installment in the Tintin series, it is naturally the first appearance of the titular hero, but it is also the first appearance of Snowy.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As Hergé despised the story and refused to republish it, for many years only the original 1930's editions remained available in circulation and at very high prices; notably this led many fans to visit the Bibliothèque Nationale in order to read the copy held there. Fan demand finally led to a tiny run of 500 being published in 1969 but this did nothing to decrease demand and by the 1970's a number of bootleg editions were being produced and sold. As such Hergé relented and in 1973 it would be reprinted in the Archives Hergé collection. With bootlegs still circulating Casterman finally produced a facsimile edition in 1981. English readers had to wait until 1989 to finally read the book in an official edition.
• Life Imitates Art: Hergé and his magazine colleagues staged an event where an actor portraying Tintin and a white fox terrier would arrive at the station of Brussels, just like the characters did at the end of the story. Hergé liked the publicity stunt, but didn't expect anyone to be there. To his surprise the place was crowded with enthusiastic fans! It was such a success that it was done again with Tintin in The Congo.
• Referenced by...: The album Tintin in Paris that Lisa grabs in the episode of The Simpsons "Husbands And Knives" has Tintin and Snowy striking the same pose as they did on this album cover.

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