SOCIAL SCIENTIST of the state budget revenues. The fuel and raw materials industries alone account for over one third of all the budget revenues. On the other hand, the one-sided development ot exports, where fuel, raw materials and semi-finished products account for over 80 percent, rendered the Russian economy quite vulnerable (of the 80 percent, in 1998, fuel and energy products accounted for 41.4 percent of the whole exports, metals for 22.1 percent, chemicals for 8.4 percent, timber and pulp-and-paper products for 5.1 percent. The fuel and raw materials market is known to be rather volatile, liable to fluctuations caused by a variety of factors, which may lead to smaller currency receipts while the physical volume of exports lasts well or even grows. That was the case in 1997, when there was a slight physical growth in the export of oil and oil products whereas their export value dropped by 8.2 percent, and in 1998 by further 27 percent. This circumstance, combined with the fall in some other export goods prices, affected the total volume of Russia's exports, which in 1997 declined by more than 1 percent, and in 1998 by 16.2 percent. The slump in the price of oil and oil products not only aggravated the problems of the Russian foreign trade, but also led to smaller budget receipts, and was one of the causes of the severe currency and financial crisis in Russia that burst out in the summer of 1998. The difficulties currently faced by the Russian foreign trade are not subject to the global markets' unfavourable trends alone. The matter is, there are at present practically no more opportunities for an extensive expansion of the Russian exports, even in the case of fuel and raw materials, both in terms of internal opportunities and perspectives of their realization on the world markets. The above data show that the share of these industries' output available on the external market has practically reached its peak. Moreover, should an economic growth in the country begin, naturally accompanied with the growing internal demand for fuel, raw materials, metals, the export potential of the raw materials industries would inevitably decrease unless there is a marked rise in the output. At the same time, the situation in the external markets has changed for the export of these goods. The European oil market, the key market for the Russian oil export, is saturated, inter alia due to the growing oil production in the North Sea. The East European countries, in trying to diversify their oil imports, have been cutting oil and oil products supplies from Russia. If the trend towards energy saving in the industrially developed countries holds out, there is no place for any marked growth in the Russian crude and processed oil supplies