"IC" == Ilia Chipitsine writes:

 IC> are they friends ?? if so, how can I specify encoding ??

there are (at least) two variants of bibtex: a standard one which is
distributed with teTeX, and an `8-bit bibtex' available at
CTAN:biblio/bibtex/8-bit, which contains enhancements in encoding area
(e.g. you can specify encodings of your bibtex databases, sorting
rules, etc).

it is not difficult to build `8-bit bibtex' under teTeX (and probably
it will be included in one of the future releases), and then you could
specify encoding in the command line options (see the documentation).

it you're using the standard bibtex, it is also possible to process
files with russian bibliography (however not as "cleanly" as with
8-bit bibtex). you could use e.g. an `rubibtex' script which is part
of the T2 package: CTAN:macros/latex/contrib/supported/t2/etc/rubibtex/
it is even included into the standard teTeX. read the documentation
in the README in the rubibtex directory. rubibtex supports koi8-r
encoding, and it is not hard to adapt it to any other desired encoding.

Best regards, -- Vladimir.