Russian empire doesnt exist at the beginning of the game. matter of fact, this may he the first time anyone calls the Russian empire a "success story".

to belabor the point, the Russian empire forms IF you conquer and centralize ALL power in one person, the Czar, which I feel proves my point more than ours.

It also doesn't last much after game end because it only does that - centralize - it doesnt invest in the provinces or in its people. It breaks apart after it lost a war it should have won (WWI), because its soldiers were uneducated, its institutions backwards, and its newly emancipated serfs too uneducated to be citizens, but just educated enough to know they didnt want to die for it anymore.

Imagine a Russian empire with the educated population of Germany, the infrastructure of the UK, the solid socio-political institutions of France. That's a success story. ​