During the Stalin era, praise for the quality of any aspect of U.S. life prompted the rejoinder "Yes, but they lynch Blacks, don't they?" Throughout the 1930s, white men traveling from the U.S. to the Soviet Union on business reported to the U.S. consulate in Riga, Latvia, that locals asked them about the dichotomy between living in a free society and "the 'lynching' of blacks." The term worked its way into fiction literature books written in the country, and was seen in this context as criticism of foreigners. Years later a science fiction comic, "Technique - The Youth" - 1948. - No. 2 titled "In a world of crazy fantasy" () featured a poem of political attacks on the cover which included a similar line: "Every planet's Negroes are being lynched there."