It is well known that transmissive and reflective type volume holograms have very high angular and spectral selectivity. Such highly selective holograms can find wide application in different fields, namely, three-dimensional imaging, diffraction optical elements, holographic storage, etc. The main problem in manufacturing thick holograms (of about a millimeter thickness) is in developing very thick photosensitive media, in which a grating can be recorded by illumination with an interference pattern. The analysis shows how different kinds of inhomogeneities and material shrinkage cause distortions in the reconstructed image and hologram selectivity properties. A review of the Russian materials (confirmed by experimental data) suitable for the recording of volume holograms is made.