POP/ROCK - Jan. 17, 1989

A new record of pop, rock and jazz standards by former Beatle Paul McCartney, released exclusively in the Soviet Union, is fetching up to $250 a copy in the United States--if fans can find one. Dealers say copies of the first edition of the album (“Back in the U.S.S.R.”), released in November by the state-run Soviet label Melodiya, have all but vanished into Beatle heaven. The record was made with the understanding that it would not be exported out of the Soviet Union, and a first edition run of 50,000 copies sold out almost immediately in the Soviet Union at a cover price of 4 rubles ($6.60). McCartney, 46, made the record as a gesture of good will to the Soviet Union and its policy of glasnost , or openness.