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the Soviet Union to, say, use the dollars that may be held offshore 

 toward the dollar debt for agricultural commodities with the Unit- 

 ed States or for future agricultural purchases? 



Ms. Brookins. I have not seen anything specifically in that re- 

 gard, but I have seen signs in the press that part of the work that 

 the IMF wants to be doing with them is trying to help them recap- 

 ture that money. Now, whether it's going to mean work with our 

 central banks and with Bank of International Settlement countries 

 to try to target that money that is illegally really out of the coun- 

 try, I get a feeling from some of the reports that have been written 

 there will be efforts in this regard to try to recapture that, but you 

 cannot bring it back in really until you have confidence in the 

 ruble. 



Mr. Barlow. But it could be brought back in in the form of com- 

 modity purchases from the West? 



Ms. Brookins. It could be if the Government could get control 

 of that outside the country. But right now it has no control. 



Mr. Barlow. Is there any indication that Russian military orga- 

 nizations are, within the administrative structures in Russia, get- 

 ting restless and putting pressure on the other administrative and 

 institutional structures to effect this for the sake of Russia? 



Ms. Brookins. I'm not aware of it. I do know, though, that the 

 Yeltsin government is very concerned, and, in fact, I understand 

 Yeltsin hired the private investigator in New York who tracked 

 down Marcos' millions to try to find out where this money is in 

 order to try to get hold of it again. 



Mr. Barlow. Dr. Raup, maybe you can answer on this one. I un- 

 derstand current state-owned enterprises in agriculture have a big 

 lock on a significant portion of the Russian budget now. Is that 

 true? 



Mr. Raup. Yes. 



Mr. Barlow. And are there pressures within the Soviet structure 

 to decrease the amount of the budget that goes to these state- 

 owned enterprises? In other words, might they wither of their own 

 weight in the budget structure over time? 



Mr. Raup. Well, much recent publicity has been given to the fact 

 that the Central Bank has been printing rubles in order to finance 

 the continued existence of firms that would otherwise go bankrupt. 

 I believe when people read that, they have in mind manufacturing 

 firms or factories. That also holds for the farms. So the printed ru- 

 bles are keeping in existence a lot of big farms that would other- 

 wise fail. 



Mr. Barlow. And it's this printing process which is the reason 

 why the ruble is so worthless? 



Mr. Raup. Oh, yes. Plus the fact that the breakdown in the pay- 

 ment system that would permit the flow of funds has been almost 

 total. You could say they have no payment system today. 



Mr. Barlow. So really the Russians are undergoing their own 

 educational process right now, learning that subsidizing these bu- 

 reaucracies, the agricultural bureaucracies, is not the way to go. 

 Perhaps we should just sit back and watch it happen? 



Mr. Raup. We may have no alternative. 



Mr. Barlow. Thank you. 



Mr. Penny. Ms. McKinney, questions? 



