ABSTRACT
The principal obstacle preventing the collective Council for Mutual Economic Assistance currency, the transferable ruble, from acquiring international validity lies in the fact that it is a creation of the planned economies, which have so far been unable to establish the necessary conditions in their individual monetary systems to make even their own domestic currencies transferable on a worldwide basis. Authentic monetary categories can come only from an authentic market, and only a genuine market can really use market monetary relations. In every planned economy, however, the tendency toward bilateralism persists, even where substantial reforms have been introduced into the foreign trade system. Though Poland, and later Hungary, expended considerable efforts to make the transferable ruble atleast partly convertible, the International Bank for Economic Cooperation developed in accordance with the wishes of the majority. Efforts to involve third countries in ruble settlements have paralleled in time the discussion concerning the possibility of making the transferable ruble at least partly convertible.
