Very well.. I am going to accept your claim of interest at face value (my apologies for absurd thread drift).

But here is a typical quote from Flight, when reaching-out to try and make a commercial aircraft directory more accurate:

The Soviet Embassy has expressed itself unable to provide any immediate information, or a check, on the details given in our 1964 survey

And?… Have we not been discussing on this very forum the incapacity of the UK Embassy and Military Mission in Egypt to locate its own missing pilots, aircraft and surviving relations’ details? Why should anyone approach the Soviet Embassy for information regarding aviation, not to mention expecting an accurate reply from them? The problem here is exactly the case that too many ‘Westerners’ (as you say) immediately accept as truthful the “fact” that the former matter is the result of incompetence and the latter is part of a Global Conspiracy to suppress information.

We couldn’t exactly write to the Ilyushin OKB…

For what possible reason could you not do so? How on earth do you think that historians conduct research on these matters?

Perhaps as a case in point, allow me to to answer the claim you have repeated (I assume emanating from Wikipedia, or some other such luminaries) regarding the NK-33 rockets. As expected, this myth is not even suitable for a rumour in a pub; it is complete nonsense.

You may examine a proper historical resume of the project and Kuznetsov’s activities by bona fide historians Petrenko and Ivanov:
http://engine.aviaport.ru/issues/03/page40.html

…and S. Yushakov:
http://www.lpre.de/sntk/NK-33/index.htm

Included are quotations from the actual governmental documents issued, and full references. In fact, when the government decided to terminate the N-1 moon project it specifically ordered Kuznetsov and his bureau to moth-ball the exisiting NK-33 engines (there were more than 100 of them) so that they might be used in future projects (if needed). Indeed, as you will read there were several proposals to do exactly this (Chelomeya with the ‘Proton’ cluster, the ‘Zenit’ project, ‘early ‘Energira’ proposal, et al), albeit nothing came of these. The proof of the government’s involment of the moth-balling process is seen by the OTK devices (government Q/C stamps) still being present on the three engines tested in 1995 and their containers. This fact is both repeated and verified on Kuznetsov Motors own web site, and the OTK device can be seen on the photograph of motor p/n F115001 during testing.

The absurd story of the government’s order to destroy the engines comes from none other than N.D. Kuznetsov, himself. Naturally, Kuznetsov could offer no documentation for this claim, which– predictably– he had received via the inevitable Secret Telephone Call. It was yet another sorry attempt on his part to invalidate any potential government claim on this equipment. It is all too typical of post 1992 Russia that such items– manufactured at a state factory, by state employees, via state employed designers, on a state budget and at the public expense– suddenly have become the private property of Kuznetsov’s company, who have reaped profits from these ever since.

Why were these not disseminated in the West?

How could I answer such a question? The Cold War, hate propaganda, right-wing paranoia and idiocy, lack of interest…? Perhaps you can tell me why this was so? I happily received my monthly subscription to Krilya Rodinu and Modelist Konstriktur magazines for years in Vancouver; why did no one (apparently) else do so?….