Growing demand among fans of the series resulted in the production of unauthorised copies of the book in the 1960s, with the first officially sanctioned republication appearing in 1969, after which it was translated into several other languages, including English.

Spying on a secret Bolshevik meeting, Tintin learns that all the Soviet grain is being exported abroad for propaganda purposes, leaving the people starving, and that the government plans to "organise an expedition against the kulaks, the rich peasants, and force them at gunpoint to give us their corn".

By planting blanks in the soldiers' rifles, Tintin fakes his death and is able to make his way into the snowy wilderness, where he discovers an underground Bolshevik hideaway in a haunted house.

[5] The idea for the character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams.

Although it's possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—had been employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic and conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels.

[8] Anti-communist sentiment was strong, and a Soviet exhibition held in Brussels in January 1928 was vandalised amid demonstrations by the fascist National Youth Movement (Jeunesses nationales) in which Degrelle took part.

[6] Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier stated that graphically, Totor and Tintin were "virtually identical" except for the scout uniform,[15] also noting many similarities between their respective adventures, particularly in the illustration style, the fast pace of the story, and the use of humour.

[16] Hergé also had experience creating anti-communist propaganda, having produced a number of satirical sketches for Le Sifflet in October 1928 titled "70 per cent of Communist chefs are odd ducks".

Instead, Wallez wanted Hergé to send Tintin to the Soviet Union, founded in 1922 by the Marxist–Leninist Bolshevik Party after seizing power from the Russian Empire during the 1917 October Revolution.

Being both Roman Catholic and politically right-wing, Wallez was opposed to the atheist, anti-sectarian, anti-theocratic and left-wing Soviet policies, and wanted Tintin's first adventure to reflect this, to persuade its young readers with anti-Marxist and anti-communist ideas.

[13] Later commenting on why he produced a work of propaganda, Hergé said that he had been "inspired by the atmosphere of the paper", which taught him that being a Catholic meant being anti-Marxist,[13] and since childhood he had been horrified by the Bolshevik shooting of the Romanov family in July 1918.

Published in both Belgium and France in 1928, Moscou sans voiles sold well to a public eager to believe Douillet's anti-Bolshevik claims, many of which were of doubtful accuracy.

[24] Prior to serialisation, an announcement ran in the 4 January 1929 edition of Le Petit Vingtième,[13] proclaiming: "[W]e are always eager to satisfy our readers and keep them up to date on foreign affairs.

[25] Biographer Benoît Peeters thought this a private joke between staff at Le Petit Vingtième; alluding to the fact that Hergé had originally been employed as a photojournalist, a job that he never fulfilled.

[33] During the stunt, the 15-year-old Lucien Pepermans, a friend of Hergé's who had Tintin's features, arrived at Brussels' Gare du Nord railway station aboard the incoming Liège express from Moscow, dressed in Russian garb as Tintin and accompanied by a white dog; in later life Hergé erroneously claimed that he had accompanied Pepermans, whereas it had been Julien De Proft.

Proceeding by limousine to the offices of Le Vingtième Siècle, they were greeted by further crowds, largely of Catholic Boy Scouts; Pepermans gave a speech on the building's balcony, before gifts were distributed to fans.

[34][35] From 26 October 1930, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was syndicated to French Catholic magazine Cœurs Vaillants ("Brave Hearts"), recently founded by the Abbé Gaston Courtois.

Courtois had travelled to Brussels to meet Wallez and Hergé, but upon publication thought that his readers would not understand the speech bubble system, adding explanatory sentences below each image.

[37] Recognising the continued commercial viability of the story, Wallez published it in book form in September 1930 through the Brussels-based Éditions du Petit Vingtième at a print run of 10,000, each sold at twenty francs.

[36] Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier believed that another factor in his decision might have been the story's virulently anti-Marxist theme, which would have been unpopular amidst growing West European sympathies for Marxism following the Second World War.

[21] That same theme prevented its publication in Communist Party-governed China, where it was the only completed adventure not translated by Wang Bingdong and officially published in the early 21st century.

[50][51] 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".

[52] Simon Kuper of the Financial Times criticised both Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo as the "worst" of the Adventures, being "poorly drawn" and "largely plot-free".

[53] Sociologist John Theobald of the Southampton Institute argued that Hergé had no interest in providing factual information about the Soviet Union, but only wanted to inculcate his readers against Marxism, hence depicting the Bolsheviks rigging elections, killing opponents and stealing the grain from the people.

[21] According to literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès of Stanford University, Hergé cast the Bolsheviks as "absolute evil" but was unable to understand how they had risen to power, or what their political views were.

[57] Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline described the comic writer's image of the Soviet Union as being "a Dantesque vision of poverty, famine, terror, and repression".