The Russian space program worked incredibly hard to get those images. They focused on Venus when nobody else was sending missions there. I mean, still nobody else has really sent anything there!
But the Venera Program was incredibly successful despite, Venus being an extraordinarily harsh environment to operate in.
That sounds right. I recall that one of the probes had a camera that was able to take a series of images like a video. But the video visually degraded with every shot it took after opening the lens cap. The effect was like watching a movie as the projector film starts to melt.