Voennaya Taina (1981)

User Summary Voennaya Taina ("The Military Secret") is a Soviet-era game for children aged 7-9 that is pure propaganda. It combines a snakes-and-ladders type track with a story in the rule book that plays out through the illustrations along the track. It has its roots in a Russian fairy-tale, and shows strapping young lad starting life placidly farming with his father, seeing his father go off to war on horseback and come back wounded, and then following in his footsteps. He goes off to war, has his comrades in the lines betrayed to the fascists, survives capture and prison and eventually triumphs over both the fascist trio and the cigar-smoking capitalist giving orders behind the scenes.