As the International Monetary Fund tries to conceal its massive failures in Russia, its obfuscations grow more desperate. In mid-February, Managing Director Michel Camdessus defended the record:

"There is also, of course, financial assistance. Let me tell you here that contrary to what has recently been said by some - with more eloquence than respect for truth - the money made available by the so-called West in support of Russia has not been so negligible! It amounted to at least $58 billion over the two years 1992-93."

This is a remarkable sum, but remarkable mainly because it is phony. Let's see how Camdessus concocts his totals.

It turns out that $31 billion of his sum is not actually "money made available" to Russia but rather Russia's nonpayment on old debts of the Soviet Union that were falling due in 1992 and '93. Some $15 billion of the debt payments, owed to Western governments, was formally postponed, but no payments were permanently reduced or forgiven. Another $16 billion, owed to commercial banks, has not even been formally renegotiated. The Russian government is simply not paying, since it lacks the money, and the banks are in effect rolling over the bills month to month.

Another $4 billion is German payments agreed on in 1991 to cover the costs of relocating Soviet troops from Germany to Russia. There is no net assistance here. That is why the Western governments made clear in 1992 that they were not counting the troop expenses as part of their announced (but undelivered) $24 billion aid package. They have been resurrected by Camdessus to pad the total.

Another $20 billion, according to Camdessus, is from Western governments. This sum is incredible for three reasons. First, the total itself is dubious and not documented by the IMF. Second, whatever the actual sum, the vast majority was trade credits that Russia must repay at market rates, much of it within a short period of time. When the United States gives a credit for Russia to buy grain, the IMF counts the grain as aid, but it does not count the repayment the next year as negative aid!

Third, as the IMF knows well, the trade credits were not part of any assistance package for reform. Various governments tried to peddle their surplus merchandise to Russia - Italian shoes, East German antiquated machinery - and they did this with the come-on of short-term loans to Russia's corrupt and profligate state trading companies. The companies took the goods, and the Russian budget got the debts. The repayment of this "aid" is currently adding to Russia's budget woes and inflation.

The IMF rightly argued for two years to stop this corrupting and expensive practice. At the end of 1993, reform finance minister Boris Federov finally succeeded in blocking new credits of this kind just before he was squeezed from office. Yet in its ridiculous attempt to magnify Western aid, the IMF adds these credits as part of the Western assistance effort.

Perhaps $2 billion of the $20 billion from Western governments came in grants rather than loans. Probably half of these grants were paid to Western consulting firms rather than to the Russian government. Grant support for Russia's budget was negligible.

That leaves $3 billion, the money from the IMF and the World Bank. But even here there is less than meets the eye. The IMF "lent" $1 billion in 1992, but under the surrealistic condition that the Russian government hold the money in the bank that year rather than use it for the budget. The IMF lent another $1.5 billion in 1993. The World Bank made about $600 million of loans, and slightly less in disbursements, to Yeltsin's government during 1992 and 1993, compared with $3 billion in loans to China in 1993 alone. When the G-7 announced its $28 billion aid program in April 1993, it expected the IMF, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to lend $18 billion. Instead, they managed $2 billion.

In the end, the Western aid effort has been disgraceful: almost no grants, self-serving short-term trade credits, virtually no support from the IMF and World Bank, little effort to make the aid coordinated and effective, and continued preening about our help. Not only was the aid derisory, but also the contrast between rhetoric and reality helped to poison the relationship between Russia and the West. Perhaps the IMF will scurry now to make loans to Russia after the reformers have departed. In any event, by his own lack of "respect for truth," Camdessus continues to lull the West and further provoke Russia's enemies of reform.

The writer, an economics professor at Harvard, resigned in January as an economic adviser to the Russian government.