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Date: January 10, 2012 9:18:44 AM CST
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If (and it's a big "if") you can open the files in a way that the text appears to be complete, although the characters aren't Russian, but a chaos of various symbols, and the displayed characters are laid out like you would expect the text to be, then the quickest approach might be that of treating it like a child's cipher.  There are multiple issues with trying to open old files.  The link between the glyph (the shape you see for each character) and the encoding number for each character is going to be very hard to track down.  But for an alphabetic language, you may be able to convert everything to Unicode, with a set of simple substitution macros.  

You may be able to find a document with a title or a few opening words a easy to guess.  Do a search and replace on each symbol in turn, replacing it with the proper Russian letter.  Figuring out the space-character early can help a great deal, if it has been substituted.  Keep a list of the substitutions that seem to work.  In a very short time, each substitution will reveal new recognizable words, which will let you guess additional substitutions. Once you get going, you can probably complete your deciphering in under 10 minutes.  Then create macros for each search and replace, chain the different macros, and you can process each new file in a few seconds.  

This will only work on files that can be opened with the target letters consistent, but in some obscure and unrecognizable encoding.  That is often a part of the problem with files created via the early Mac language kits.  So it may be worth a try.  

Derek




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