MINORITIES-Growing Pressure

in the dumps. Just this very week the Soviet Statistical.Office has reported a deterioration in the Soviet balance of trade in addition to a decline in output in the first half of 1990. Also, it has been widely known for some time that with the easing of Soviet restrictions on exchange transactions, the rouble is openly changing hands at a rate far below its formal exchange rate vis-a-vis the US dollar and that in the black market one dollar fetches more than ten, some reports mention twenty, roubles. In the circumstances, is it not time for one to ask why we are still tied down to a protocol that takes no note whatsoever of the depreciation in the rouble?