This article studies the main sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in Russia. We use SVARX approach with long-run restrictions to identify an oil price shock, a nominal shock and two types of productivity shocks. A specific Balassa–Samuelson-type productivity shock differs from a general productivity shock in its ability to affect real exchange rate in the long run. We found that the Balassa–Samuelson-type shocks account for a significant part (about a half of all fluctuations) of real exchange rate movements, which also affected real GDP dynamics. Oil price dynamics was the most important source of real GDP and real exchange rate fluctuations, but our alternative specification says that global demand shocks seem to be responsible for more fluctuations of Russian GDP than oil market–specific shocks.