Coming: Bolshoi Panty Hose

For $20 a month (no rubles, please), a reform group in the Ukraine will fax the latest political developments to Western news agencies in Moscow. In the capital the telephone company, which six months ago charged $160 to install an overseas line, now asks foreign companies to pay $20,800. The Bolshoi and Kirov ballet troupes have licensed their names in Europe, and the British promoter who put that deal together has signed an agreement to slap the prestigious titles on soap, shoes, perfume and panty hose in the U.S. Says Peter Brightman, head of the company that okayed the contract: "Everyone in the Soviet Union is desperate for hard currency."

Desperate is right. Though Soviet citizens have long sought valuta -- convertible currency with real purchasing power -- the country's worsening economy has turned the search for dollars and marks into a manic scramble. With store shelves almost bare, the ruble is worth about as much as Monopoly money. As increasing numbers of Soviets travel abroad and more foreigners visit the U.S.S.R., Soviets have been exposed to a wide variety of goods that they had not seen before. It's only natural that they develop consumer envy and try to keep up with the Joneskys. Even the government is getting in on the act. The Central Committee has started renting out government dachas, including Stalin's country house on the Black Sea.

One reason behind the Kremlin's hustle for dollars is that the Soviet Union has drawn its hard-currency reserves so low that many bills for imported goods remain unpaid, which is quickly eroding the country's credit rating. "We're now advising firms to do business here only if they have a letter of credit or some other cast-iron guarantee of payment beforehand," said the commercial attache of a Western embassy in Moscow. No mention of whether there is a charge for that letter of credit . . .