Russia Trade

Polaroid Corp., which took advantage of Russia's tradition of street vending to build a national marketing network, now derives nearly 7% of its total sales from its growing business in the formerly Communist country. "We saw business increasing in 1994 and we expect it to increase substantially in 1995," Lance Roulic, Polaroid's director of marketing and consumer goods in Russia, said in New York. Svetozor, or Shining Light, Polaroid's 65%-owned joint venture in Russia, was profitable in 1994.

Chechnya's biggest oil refinery complex burned out of control Friday after reportedly being struck by Russian bombers, and Chechen officials warned that the blaze could spread to a nearby tank containing 5,000 tons of explosive ammonia. "If it catches fire, an ecological disaster will hit the entire North Caucasus," a Chechen Foreign Ministry official told Interfax news agency.

Alexandra Shwarzstein wasn't shopping for anything in particular on a recent trip to the Century City Shopping Center, until her eyes--and hands--came to rest on the matroshka dolls at From Russia With Love, a kiosk hawking a variety of colorful Russian-made goods. "They're pretty and there's lots of them," Alexandra, 9, said while fidgeting with the hand-painted wooden dolls that stack inside one another. "You can make a family out of them."

President Clinton's proudest foreign policy achievement, his program for massive multinational aid for Russia, has suffered a pair of embarrassing and unexpected setbacks, leaving U.S. officials scrambling to recover. An ambitious Clinton plan to raise $4 billion to reform Russia's giant state-owned enterprises and turn them into private firms abruptly shrunk to an initial $500 million after Japan and other allies balked at the President's price tag, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Concern about the economy pushed Russia's ailing ruble down to a new low of 1,024 to the dollar on Monday as the tiny Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange switched to daily trading sessions. The new rate compares to 994 at the last session on Thursday. The ruble has now lost more than half its value since the start of the year, when it traded around 415 to the dollar. "People are still afraid of higher inflation," one Moscow trader said.

Few world markets are more ripe for the picking than Russia. But fewer are harder to approach. To help companies get through the bureaucracy, the World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County has secured a $500,000 federal grant for companies that want to start trading with the states of the former Soviet Union. "It's an exciting opportunity for companies here in Southern California, and I feel it takes this World Trade Center toward the goal of helping companies here in our . . .