The National Income of the Soviet Union Republics is a study of the value of the national income as an indicator of the level of economic development. Being a general production indicator the national income should be valuable as a measure of moderninzation and social mobilization in a society. The Soviet national income concept is rather complicated and it differs, furthermore, from corresponding western income concepts. That was the primary motive for this study.
     A definition of the concept of economic development was taken as a point of departure for the analysis performed in the book. This concept is assumed to designate a process where the economic system is developing towards an ever more complex structure with a higher interdependence between the various parts of the system. The concept of economic development implies a change in society's production potential as well as in people's standard of living.
     Other parts of the study aim at assessing to what extent the Soviet national income concept is theoretically defined so that the national income could in fact be seen as an indicator of economic development (in the sense previously defined) and if the national income data which were calculated on the basis of official Soviet statistics could in practice serve as an indicator of the level of economic development of the Union republics.
     On the basis of a thorough investigation of the Soviet national income theory it was found that the national income, despite a certain bias caused by the influence of the price system, in principle should be able to give at least an approximate indication on the level of economic development of a Union republic. However, in so doing, it seems that one aspect of this level — the production potential — should be better represented than the other — the standard of living.
     By comparing data on per-capita national income of the Union republics in 1956–1973 with other per-capita data on more limited aspects of the level of economic development, an assessment could be made of the suitability of using the official data on Soviet national income as an indicator of the level of economic development of the Union republics. However, the result of this comparison is not sufficiently unambiguous to warrant the conclusion that the national income data directly could depict the level of economic development of the Soviet Union republics. The comparison rather indicates that the national income was a better indicator of the republican standard of living than it was of their production potential, and that it was a good indicator of the level of economic development for some, but not for other Union republics. These results might, however, be highly dependent upon the limited selection of indicators that were available as well as upon the deficiencies in the analytical techniques that were used. Thus, the results should be considered as preliminary.
     A central place in this research is occupied by the data material about the socio-economic development of the Soviet Union republics that has been compiled in the project. The material consists of 31 basic indicators with data specified for the years 1956–1973. The 31 indicators consist of a comparably broad and exhaustive selection of data from the Soviet Statistical Yearbook Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR regularly published yearly since 1956. This vast data material constitutes in itself a significant side result of the project's research and it should be of great use for future research both on Eastern Europe and in other fields. It should also be of a certain interest to the general public.
     The data material was published by Jan Åke Dellenbrant in his "Soviet Social and Political Indicators; Selected Statistical Data on the Soviet Republics", Bidrag till öststatsforskningen (Contributions to Soviet and East European Research), Vol 4, 1976. However, the major part of the data is also available in an appendix to Dellenbrant's final report from the project, Soviet Regional Policy; A Quantitative Inquiry into the Social and Political Development of the Soviet Republics published in 1980 by Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm and Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. The material is also available on magnetic tape thus making it directly accessible to computerized analysis.