Don't look a gift horse in the mouth; beggars can't be choosers; and don't bite the hand that feeds you -- the English language, and probably most others, are full of cliches that promote graciousness toward those who extend a helping hand.


Indeed, it is hard, on the surface, to find fault with the pledge announced Thursday by the United States and Japan at the Tokyo Conference on Assistance to New Independent States that they will donate $374 million in emergency winter aid.


But it is well for donor nations to take a critical look not only at the quality and quantity of their assistance, but also at the character of their recipients in hopes that this will cause them to rethink their generosity.


The wrong kind of assistance can do more harm than good. The European Community and the United States, who have been in a protracted battle over farm subsidies, have brought their one-upmanship subsidy contest to Russia. They are both subsidizing agricultural imports here through a series of programs that seem designed at least as much to coddle their powerful farm lobbies at home as they are to help Russia and the former republics.


Some Russian farmers have already expressed concern about the impact this assistance is having on their industry.


Medical aid is clearly essential and no one can have any qualms with the type of assistance that will save lives. But the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Organization has called on world bodies to stop importing all but the most essential medicines, saying it is probably damaging to development of the domestic industry.


Russia and many of the republics are not enfeebled nations. They are rich in resources and some have well-developed, albeit outdated, industrial bases. The quality of aid to such nations should differ from the assistance given to a more backwards countries.


It is time to consider direct grants to industry, for defense conversion and retooling, and to agriculture, for machinery and technology that will increase production and solve the transportation mess.


But wealthy nations have drawn an inexplicable distinction between humanitarian aid of food and medicine, which they are happy to give free and clear of encumbrances, and aid for industry, which is always in the form of loans.


Short-term aid is not necessarily bad, but there is no place at this point in history for the short-term thinking behind that aid, which could lead Russia and the republics permanently toward dependence.