See Gerald Howson's *Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War* on how the Soviets gouged the Spanish Republic "by manipulating exchange rates between rubles to dollars and dollars to pesetas. Thus, while the ruble remained steady against the dollar throughout the late 1930s at approximately 5.3:1, the Soviets were converting the ruble at anywhere from 3.95 to 2.0 to the dollar, then converting the higher dollar value to pesetas for final billing to the Republic. The Spaniards never saw the original ruble price, and were thus never aware that the prices they were being charged were, on average (per Howson's estimate), over 25 percent higher than they should have been. 34 Howson believes that this price-jiggering resulted in overcharges of not less than $51 million." (I am quoting a review which is consistent with my own memory of what Howson wrote; I am not giving the URL because Google says the site is unsafe.)