Well-established results indicate that export diversification might be a better growth strategy for an emerging economy as long as its GDP per capita level is smaller than an empirically defined threshold. As average incomes in Russian regions are likely to be far below the threshold, it might be important to estimate their diversification potential. The paper discusses the Atlas of economic complexity for Russian regions created to visualize regional export baskets, to estimate their complexity and evaluate regional export potential. The paper’s results are consistent with previous findings: the complexity of export is substantially higher and diversification potential is larger in western and central regions of Russia. Their export potential might become larger if western and central regions, first, try to join global value added chains and second, cooperate and develop joint diversification strategies. Northern and eastern regions are by contrast much less complex and their diversification potential is small.
