[John Beaman]

I DO NOT want to start a flame war, so please don't. However, over the past years I have seen conflicting postings on the state of Russian archives on the VVS operations. I am curious if anyone can objectively comment of what condition they are in? By this I mean are they located in places one can enter and do research, are they organized with card or fiche indexes, etc.? And, how difficult is it to get into them? Assuming you can get in are they in a reasonably organized state?

I have done work on the US NARA archives, NASM at Silver Hill and Ultra decripts. While none is just laying around for one to discover, they are reasonably well organized and not too difficult to get access to. So, I am curious as to the true state of Russian archives?

Thanks