(24 May 2011)
AP TELEVISION
Moscow, Russia - May 18, 2011
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1. Wide of queue in front of entrance to State History Museum
2. Close up of banner announcing exhibition reading: (Russian) "What is written in ink... Autographs of prominent personalities of the Soviet state", tilt down people moving in queue
3. Wide of visitors looking at exhibits
4. Close up of painting of first Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin
5. Close up of drawing of prominent Soviet politicians Lev Kamenev (left) and Leon Trotsky (right)
6. Close up of picture of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin
7. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Tatyana Koloskova, Exhibition curator:
"The archive gives us the opportunity to delve back in time. And what is especially important is that the facts stated in our textbooks are often impersonal, and the archive gives an opportunity to interact on some level with people who lived in an earlier era, who suffered and who were the masters of our fates."
8. Close up of letter written by Lenin's eldest sister Anna Ulyanova, in which she writes that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew
9. Notes written by several Communist leaders, including Stalin, on a government resolution
10. Exhibition pieces: in the left a Soviet order, in the centre a pass to Lenin's Mausoleum, on the left a caricature made by Nikolai Bukharin depicting Cheka (first Soviet secret police) founder Felix Dzherzhinsky
11. Set up shot of Aleksey Levykin, Director of State History Museum
12. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Aleksey Levykin, Director of State History Museum:
"I think our museum staff have created some very interesting and important work and didn't have any fear of showing these documents. I don't think this exhibition will provoke criticism from anyone because there is some very interesting material, mementoes and documents shown here, which I think will attract visitors."
13. Wide of visitors looking at exhibits
14. Mid of exhibits
15. Close up of drawing depicting Lenin, Stalin and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, tilt down drawings depicting Molotov (left) and Stalin (right)
16. Close up of drawing depicting Stalin as Tsarist-era policeman
17. Various of visitors looking at exhibits
18. Close up of drawing made by Cuban artist depicting Lenin, Soviet leader Nikolai Khruschev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro
19. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Konstantin Maslov, Moscow resident, vox pop:
"I came here specially to see this exhibition when I found out that it had opened. I am very pleasantly surprised by the fact that they are showing so many first class documents."
Soviet Television
FILE: Date and location unknown
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20. Close up of Stalin
21. Lenin on podium giving speech
STORYLINE:
The Soviet Union's top figures presented themselves as stern and fearless, but a new exhibition of documents shows they could also be backbiting, bewildered and despairing.
The display at the State History Museum in Moscow presents more than 100 documents, many of them only recently declassified - the first time ordinary Russians have had a chance to see any of them.
The exhibition's curator says it will help demythologise the leaders of the failed totalitarian state.
"The facts stated in our textbooks are often impersonal, and the archive gives an opportunity to interact on some level with people who lived in an earlier era, who suffered and who were the masters of our fates," said Tatyana Koloskova, the exhibition curator.
The exhibition also discloses that Lenin was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.
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