GENEVA / TOLSTOY WAR AND PEACE

STORY: GENEVA / TOLSTOY WAR AND PEACE
TRT: 5:11
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / RUSSIAN / FRENCH / NATS

DATELINE: 3 - 4 OCTOBER 2019 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND


SHOTLIST:

3 OCTOBER 2019 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

1. Wide shot, Swiss airline Airbus, Geneva airport.
2. Med shot, Swiss military, Geneva airport.
3.Wide shot, Mme. Petrova getting off airplane, Geneva airport.
4.Med shot, Mme. Petrova with the briefcase containing manuscript, her interpreter and Prof. Berchtold, Geneva airport.
5.Wide shot, Mme. Petrova getting in the car, Geneva airport.
6.SOUNDBITE - Mme. Nadezhda Petrova, Vice-Director of the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow: (In Russian) “Tolstoy was always against violence. So, he was always against war. I think he would probably always call for peace. And that all the issues, all the problems were solved only by peaceful means - through negotiations.”
7.Wide shot, briefcase being placed on a work surface at the museum, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.

4 OCTOBER 2019 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

8. Close up, briefcase being opened.
9.Med shot, Petrova speaking, Geneva airport.
10. Wide shot, Fondation Martin Bodmer, wall with foundation’s name at entrance.
11. Wide shot, Fondation Martin Bodmer, main entrance.
12. Wide shot, Fondation Martin Bodmer, views of Geneva.
13. SOUNDBITE (French) Jacques Berchtold, Director, Fondation Bodmer:
“So these draft pages, written between 1864 and 1869, have left Russia for the first time, and it’s the first time they have left the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow too. We have chosen a conversation that’s particularly intense and dramatic, between the protagonist of the book, who’s the Count Pierre (Bézoukhov) and one of his best friends, who’s an officer in the Russian army, and who’s going to fight Napoleon in the Battle of Borodino. And just before this battle, the Count – the Prince Andrej – who is himself an officer, speaks with utter desolation. He says very clearly that the war cannot be compared at all to a game of chess, that war is a totally dirty detestable affair.”
14. Close up, package with manuscript being opened by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
15. Close up, package with manuscript being opened by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
16. Close up, package with manuscript being opened by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
17. Close up, Prof. Jacques Berchtold speaking, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
18. Close up, package with manuscript being opened by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
19. Close up, package with manuscript being opened by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
20. Close up, Prof. Jacques Berchtold speaking, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
21. SOUNDBITE (French) Pierre Hazan, Human Rights Expert and Commissioner of “La Guerre et La Paix” exhibition:
“The world of Tolstoy is obviously radically different to ours; but what’s at stake is the same, the need for concord, the need for discussion, the need for multilateralism, the need for dialogue between different cultures, so yes, it’s essential that Tolstoy is part of this period of reflection today.”
22. Med shot, manuscript being analysed by fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
23. SOUNDBITE (French) Jacques Berchtold, Director, Fondation Bodmer:
“The same year that he wrote War And Peace, well, Henri Dunant, from Geneva, chose to show another war happening at the same time: the Battle of Solferino, between the French and Austrians, in Italy. Dunant shows a bit like Tolstoy, a war that’s directly contemporaneous, the atrocities, the dying, the war-wounded whose agony is interminable. Henri Dunant’s text is so powerful that it leads to nations creating the Red Cross, just as the founder members of the League of Nations have Tolstoy’s War And Peace as their guiding principle, Tolstoy playing a huge role in spreading his pacifist message and a consideration of pacifism that goes hand in hand with social reform.”
24. Close up, manuscript, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
25. Med shot, Prof. Jacques Berchtold, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
26. Close up, manuscript being analysed, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
27. Close up, fine art restoration expert Florence Darbre, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
28. Close up, manuscript, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
29. Med shot, manuscript being placed on show, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
30. Wide shot, onlookers, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
31. Med shot, manuscript on show, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
32. Wide shot, manuscript on show, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
33. Med shot, Prof. Jacques Berchtold speaking, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
34. Wide shot, old photo of the the Palais des Nations during its construction in the 1920s.
35. SOUNDBITE (English) Stefan Vukotic, Chief, Archives Management Unit, Institutional Memory Section, United Nations Geneva Library:
“At that time in history the Member States were not really ready to renounce war as a means for conducting foreign policy, it became clear after a while that this mission of the League of Nations was not going to be as successful as they had originally envisaged, so they focused more on the technical side of cooperation, so the League did wonderful things in this respect that were later taken over completely by the UN, so just the standardization of vaccines and medicines and the promotion of vaccination world over. The lessons of the League’s Covenant of the way the multilateral system was organized at the time was very useful for the United Nations and it was – if I may say so myself – very successful in avoiding the pitfalls that the League didn’t succeed in avoiding. So for instance, the UN in its founding document outright prohibited war as a means of conducting foreign policies, except in circumstances permitted by the Charter, whereas the League's Covenant didn’t explicitly prohibit war, it just asked Member States to refrain from war whenever possible.”
36. Wide shot, old photo of the Palais des Nations during its construction in the 1920s.
37. Med shot, Mr. Stefan Vukotic speaking, United Nations Geneva, Library.
38. Med shot, Mr. Stefan Vukotic speaking, United Nations Geneva, Library.
39. Med shot, viewers applauding, Fondation Martin Bodmer, exhibition room.
40. SOUNDBITE (English) Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General, United Nations Geneva:
“It’s an absolutely fantastic experience. I’ve seen the manuscripts of Lev Tolstoy in my native country of course, but I know they never left Russia and that’s the first time ever that they are leaving Russia. But for me it’s very important that Lev Tolstoy is here because he spent some time in Geneva. He was coming to Geneva to the Villa Bocage and Villa Bocage now is a part of the United Nations, it’s situated in our park of the United Nations.”
41. SOUNDBITE (English) Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General, United Nations Geneva:
“It’s not only peace it’s the world, it’s the humanity, so it’s not only about antagonism between the war and peace but also what makes humanity. So for us it’s really restoring the lessons of the past, that we have to work for peace, work on all levels, and the only possibility now to work for peace is new multilateralism, the multilateralism of the United Nations.”

STORYLINE:

For the first time, part of the original manuscript of Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace was unveiled amid tight security today (04 Oct) in Geneva, where it is to take pride of place in an exhibition helping to mark 100 years of cooperation between nations.

The precious cargo, which is widely regarded as one of the finest novels ever written on humankind’s conflicting desires to fight and live together, arrived a night earlier at the city’s international airport from Moscow.

Masked and heavily armed Swiss army soldiers clad in black and clad in armoured clothing met Swiss flight LX1337 on the airport Tarmac, as Tolstoy Museum Vice-Director Nadezhda Petrova emerged from the jet, clutching a metal briefcase containing six pages of the opus.

Because of the different humidity levels in Moscow and Geneva, they would have to remain out of sight for a little while longer, Petrova explained.

The Russian VIP was then escorted around the lake in an armed convoy to Fondation Martin Bodmer, where one of the three exhibitions is taking place in Geneva to mark the centenary of multilateralism in the Swiss city. It is something that the author would have likely supported, she told journalists.

“Tolstoy was always against violence,” she said. “So, he was always against war. I think he would probably always call for peace. And that all the issues, all the problems were solved only by peaceful means - through negotiations.”

Taking pride of place in the “La Guerre Et La Paix” (War and Peace) exhibition, the Tolstoy passage covers the period just before the Battle of Borodino in September 1812, between Napoleon’s troops, and their Russian counterparts, believed to number around 250,000 in all.

“So these draft pages, written between 1864 and 1869, have left Russia for the first time, and it’s the first time they have left the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow too,” explained Jacques Berchtold, Director of Fondation Martin Bodmer.

Although the fighting causing tens of thousands of casualties and cleared the way for Napoleon to march on Tsar Alexander’s Moscow, it proved to be an ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the French general, whose forces withdrew from Russia in October.

It was the futility and barbarity of conflicts like this that Tolstoy wanted to describe in detail as a warning to others in book three of the more than 1,000-page epic, Berchtold insisted.

“We have chosen a conversation that’s particularly intense and dramatic, between the protagonist of the book, who’s the Count Pierre (Bézoukhov) and one of his best friends, who’s an officer in the Russian army, and who’s going to fight Napoleon in the Battle of Borodino,” he said. “And just before this battle, the Count – the Prince Andrej – who is himself an officer, speaks with utter desolation. He says very clearly that the war cannot be compared at all to a game of chess, that war is a totally dirty detestable affair.”

Although more than 200 years separate the world of War And Peace from our own, Tolstoy’s preoccupation with the human condition – and his support for pacificism - remains relevant today, said Pierre Hazan, human rights expert and one of the driving forces behind “La Guerre et La Paix” exhibition.

“The world of Tolstoy is obviously radically different to ours; but what’s at stake is the same, the need for concord, the need for discussion, the need for multilateralism, the need for dialogue between different cultures, so yes, it’s essential that Tolstoy is part of this period of reflection today.”

This re-examination of the need for international cooperation is taken up elsewhere in Geneva, in exhibitions at the United Nations and at the International Committee of the Red Cross – where Martin Bodmer was Vice-President between 1947 and 1964.

The link between Tolstoy’s writings and a wider wish by some nations to tackle the enduring horror and constant threat of war is clear, Berchtold insisted, pointing to co-founder of the Red Cross, Henri Dunant.

“The same year that he wrote War And Peace, well, Henri Dunant, from Geneva, chose to show another war happening at the same time: the Battle of Solferino, between the French and Austrians, in Italy,” he said.

“Dunant shows a bit like Tolstoy, a war that’s directly contemporaneous, the atrocities, the dying, the war-wounded whose agony is interminable. Henri Dunant’s text is so powerful that it leads to nations creating the Red Cross, just as the founder members of the League of Nations have Tolstoy’s War And Peace as their guiding principle, Tolstoy playing a huge role in spreading his pacifist message and a consideration of pacifism that goes hand in hand with social reform.”

At the UN in Geneva, an exhibition on the evolution of 20th century international cooperation through the eyes of the League of Nations and the United Nations shows that while the jury is still out on exactly what multilateralism has meant in the past, and what it means today, the international community can still make a collectively positive difference.

Just after the First World War, when the League of Nations was founded, “at that time in history the Member States were not really ready to renounce war as a means for conducting foreign policy”, explained Stefan Vukotic, Chief of the Archives Management Unit in the Institutional Memory Section at the
UN Library in Geneva. “It became clear after a while that this mission of the League of Nations was not going to be as successful as they had originally envisaged, so they focused more on the technical side of cooperation, so the League did wonderful things in this respect that were later taken over completely by the UN, so just the standardization of vaccines and medicines and the promotion of vaccination world over.”

Maintaining that the United Nations “learned the lessons” of the League of Nations’ failure to prevent the Second World War, Vukotic pointed out that the United Nations’ founding Charter explicitly prohibited war as a means of conducting foreign policy, except in exceptional circumstances. “The League's Covenant didn’t explicitly prohibit war, it just asked Member States to refrain from war whenever possible.” he said.

Underlining the historic and symbolic value of seeing Tolstoy’s text in Switzerland, United Nations Geneva Director and Russian national Tatiana Valovaya described it as an “absolutely fantastic experience. I’ve seen the manuscripts of Lev Tolstoy in my native country of course, but I know they never left Russia and that’s the first time ever that they are leaving Russia. But for me it’s very important that Lev Tolstoy is here because he spent some time in Geneva. He was coming to Geneva to the Villa Bocage and Villa Bocage now is a part of the United Nations, it’s situated in our park of the United Nations and Lev Tolstoy.”

Valovaya also explained the subtlety of the title of Tolstoy’s work, noting that in the Russian, it referred “not only (to) peace, it’s the world, it’s the humanity, so it’s not only about antagonism between the war and peace but also what makes humanity. So for us it’s really restoring the lessons of the past, that we have to work for peace, work on all levels, and the only possibility now to work for peace is new multilateralism, the multilateralism of the United Nations.”