Tintin in The Land of The Soviets - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

In his study of the cultural and literary legacy of Brussels, André De Vries remarked that Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was "crude by Hergé's later standards, in every sense of the word." Sociologist John Theobald argued that instead of providing factual material on the Soviet Union, Hergé depicted the Bolsheviks rigging elections, killing opponents and stealing the grain from the people, all of which was done in order to portray them in a negative light in the minds of his young readers. Hergé displayed the Bolsheviks and their Marxist-Leninist ideology as being "absolute Evil", and set Tintin to fight against them, but as Jean-Marie Apostolidès noted, "because does not understand origin, he does not directly engage with but merely observes this world of misery", simply fighting Bolsheviks rather than fomenting counter-revolution to actively overthrow them.