THE rate of economic development of the Soviet Union is a subject of considerable interest to western economists. To date, the most important single measure of this development has been the official Russian index of the physical volume of production of Russian industry published in various Soviet sources for the I920's and I930's. In the past few years, there have been several articles by western economists devoted to a discussion of the defects of this index.2 The main criticisms are these. First, the index represents gross value of industrial output rather than value-added. Second, the index is subject to an inflationary bias on two main counts: (i) prices of the baseweight year I926-27 were unduly high for many newly produced industrial goods which continued to be valued at these inflated prices even after more efficient production methods ha:d brought their prices more in line with the overall price structure of the economy; had a later year been used as a base-weight year the resulting index would have revealed a smaller rise than the existing index does; (2) the so-called constant prices of I926-27 include an increasing number of prices for later years so that, under conditions of rising prices, an artificial inflation of the index results. Soviet economic authorities themselves have long voiced dissatisfaction with the official index expressed in prices of I926-27, and in I948 it was decided to abandon the I926-27 based index in favor of an index expressed in current wholesale prices and corrected for price changes by means of a wholesale price index.3 It is not known whether the new method is in actual use, whether the old official index will be recalculated by the new method or, if this is done, whether the results will be made public. Despite these reasons for dissatisfaction with the old official index, western economists have made no attempt to date to construct independently a more satisfactory index of Soviet industrial output.4 Although Societ statistical sources contain an adequate number of series for output in physical units (i.e., tons, square meters, etc.), a means for combining these in a single index of industrial output has been lacking. This is due to the deliberate suppression by Soviet authorities of the necessary price data. No systematic presentation of price data has been made for any year, and such scattered prices as are available are largely for years prior to I930. No price index has been published for the years after I93I. Value of output is never expressed in the prices of the current year but always in the so-called constant prices of I926-