Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is sent with his dog Snowy on an assignment to the Soviet Union, departing from Brussels. En route to Moscow, an agent of the OGPU - the Soviet secret police - sabotages the train and declares the reporter to be a "dirty little bourgeois". The Berlin Police blame Tintin for the bombing but he escapes to the border of the Soviet Union. Following closely, the OGPU agent finds Tintin and brings him before the local Commissar's office, instructing the Commissar to make the reporter "disappear ... accidentally". Escaping again, Tintin finds "how the Soviets fool the poor idiots who still
Tintin (character) drawings of Totor merely illustrated the story; the text that appeared below the drawings is what propelled the action. Totor had been very much in Hergé's mind; its new comics character would be, Hergé himself later said, "the little brother of Totor ... keeping the spirit of a Boy Scout." Assouline would describe Totor as "a sort of trial run" for Tintin, while Harry Thompson noted that in several years he would "metamorphose" into Tintin. Hergé had seen the new style of American comics and was ready to try it. Tintin's new comic would be a strip cartoon with dialogue