"Supporting Russian Democracy" {editorial, Dec. 4} claims that Russia has received $23.5 billion of the $24 billion in aid that was promised in April. This is unfortunately incorrect and is based on faulty accounting by Bush administration officials intent on hiding a record of reckless neglect. In fact, an accurate count shows that Russia has received only about $10 billion in 1992 and that even this aid was overwhelmingly in the form of short-term commercial credits that will soon come due. There has been no real strategy or program of Western assistance to support Russia's reforms, and the reformers have consequently been left in extreme peril from the political attacks of the hard-liners.

The editorial's reckoning starts with $1 billion lent by the IMF but does not mention that the IMF funds were lent under the incredible condition that they not be used in 1992. The World Bank has recently agreed to a $600 million loan, but it is likely that only $250 million or so will be used by the end of the year.

The editorial then reported that $14 billion will come in other grants and loans from Western governments. As a matter of fact, only about $8.5 billion of credits had come as of October, with another $500 million in grants. Nearly $1 billion of the credits actually constitutes a rescheduling of previous debts rather than a real inflow of new resources. Moreover, the credits has almost all been short-term (less than three years) and at market interest rates. Around $2.5 billion will come due already next year (and will be unpayable at that time).

The administration is also apparently trying to count $2.5 billion of expenditures on Russian troop withdrawals even though the money is actually spent in Germany, was committed before 1992 and was never part of the $24 billion aid package, a point made clear to the Russian government and to me personally by the highest officials of the German government earlier this year.

The editorial also credits the West with rescheduling Russia's debt. Unfortunately, this has not occurred. The Paris club of official creditors has so far failed to agree on a debt rescheduling this year. It is true that Russia did not pay its debt, since it lacked the money, but it is untrue that it received the relief of a formal debt rescheduling. Russia has suffered as the result of the Paris club's inaction; many funds offered to Russia at the start of the year have since been blocked by the donor governments, because of the absence of a debt rescheduling. The best that the West has come up with are several three-month rollovers of debts, which have given no relief to Russia or to potential new donors and investors.

Incidentally, the editorial questions whether debt principal as well as interest should be counted in the "assistance." The Western governments made clear to Russia back in March that principal rescheduling would not be counted in an assistance package for 1992, because it was already assumed in November 1991 that the principal would be rescheduled and that a 1992 package should be counted as additional to the previous agreement (since the needs were measured as additional to the previous debt agreement).

The editorial also states that the stabilization fund is "ready and waiting." Alas, if it were only true. The Russian government argued for months with the international community about access to such a fund. Absurdly, it was told that the fund would not be available until Russia actually succeeded in stabilizing. By contrast, in Poland a similar fund was made available at the start of the stabilization program.

But the situation is even worse than this. There never was a sense of urgency or a strategy to the Western assistance. There was never an overall design of the policy. There was nobody in charge of the U.S. government effort. There was no strategy for using assistance to bolster the reforms. The $7.5 billion or so of trade credits were not coordinated or made conditional on actual reforms. And remarkably, even the Soviet debt has not been rescheduled. Of course, The Post could not know these things; they have been well hidden by the administration.

If Russian reforms now fail, the Bush administration's neglect will certainly rank among the greatest failures of American foreign policy. On the other hand, if the reformers are able to survive the political test in Moscow now underway, the new Clinton administration will face an urgent need and opportunity to get a real assistance program underway.

The writer is a professor of economics at Harvard University and an economic adviser to the Russian government.