MOSCOW — More than 1,000 foreign firms have created formal joint ventures with Soviet partners, but many of the enterprises have failed to start up and some have gone bankrupt, the Tass

press agency said today. Tass said the Finance Ministry has registered 1,284 joint ventures, with a total charter capital of more than $3 billion. Half of the Western investment in joint

ventures went into light industry and service establishments, it said. Another 20% was invested in industrial services such as marketing, engineering and maintenance, and about 15% was

committed to heavy industry and machine tools. But Tass said the ventures were frequently plagued by legal, financial and organizational problems. “The number of joint enterprises that have