In that last picture you see the same artefacts around Stalin as well, and around every single one of the individuals here if you look closely. Like, look at all their shoulders, they all have the same “aura”. You want to say that they were bluescreening? Make sure that you don’t see what you want to see. I can’t find a single claim that such erasures did not happen.

How do you explain exposure change between the two photos?

A serious answer would be perhaps transition to measuring success of a company by profits.