I recently saw a TV program where the presenter checked out the factual basis of the Tintin stories and found a significant number of real events corresponded to Tintin's fictional adventures. Interestingly, UK communist trade union leaders were invited to Russia to witness the marvels of the Bolshevik revolution. The starving populus was deftly hidden from view. In the Tintin parallel story visiting English Marxists are duped by 'fake'smoke coming out of factory chimneys when nothing was actually being produced. This is hardly to be dismissed 'anti-Soviet propaganda' as the author suggests but accurately depicts actual events of the time.