Understanding the Russian Economy

Lots of back and forth all over the Internet and IRL re whether Russia's a "country masquerading as a gas station" or something else.
So, I did some research to see what's true and what's not about that country.
First, their list of exports vs our list of exports:

Russia's Top Ten Exports

Now for the US:


For the US, no one category stands out.
Russia's huge reliance on hydrocarbons is pretty obvious, as on their list there isn't a single other category that even gets to a mere 5% share of their exports. Basically for them it's hydrocarbons and then everything else.
It turns out some folks at MIT and Harvard put together an "economic complexity" index to measure the complexity of each nation's economy vs others. There's other economic comparative rankings, and I chose "Ease of starting a business" to average in with it, because this one, despite the name, is a nice shorthand for how well-governed a country is, as if you have to go through a lot of steps to set up a corner barbershop, it's more than likely because the country has put in place a big bureaucracy you can't get around without spreading some baksheesh, gelt, you-name-it. The "economic complexity" index has some weird stuff in it, like minusing from your score if you ship lots of planes and spacecraft. They have a logical explanation for this, but it's obviously got flaws. All of these kinds of things do, so averaging two of them together also smooths out the inevitable idiosyncrasies in how these things are put together.
Below, edited rankings, since the whole list is too long. It's pretty much as expected. Russia's neighborhood in the rankings includes lots of its former republics including Ukraine, no surprise there (bolded them to show that; Serbia was bolded because it's such a close ally). Russia's not doing much differently from its other former Soviet republics here.
So, it's not a hopeless basket case. But looking at all of the data from these three different sources, it's what I thought: a country operating at a level far below its potential, and economically a very distant rival to the First World.

Sources:
http://www.atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/country/2008/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starting_a_Business_Index

Average of rankings in "Economic Complexity" and "Ease of Starting a Business"