Among superpower currencies, the Soviet ruble gets no respect. Its official value is so overstated after decades of isolation from the marketplace that even Soviet citizens treat it as funny money. In the past year Soviet economists have openly acknowledged that the ruble's official rate of exchange with Western currencies was seriously out of whack. While the Soviet state bank, Gosbank, gave visiting foreigners only 0.65 rubles for every U.S. dollar, a thriving black market offered as much as 15 rubles. An internal study done for the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party reportedly estimated the ruble's true value to...
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