Mongol invasion: isolated kingdoms being gobbled up one by one by an invading superpower and having to decide whether to fight or throw in their lot with the invaders) Kievan Rus era: Middle Ages, multiple small city state kingdoms, lots of barbarians nipping at the borders, staggeringly high levels of isolation from the surrounding world, kind of a mythic age for Russia with knight-errant heroes (the bogatyr) riding around the country slaying giants and dragons. Best candidates for a gaming setting to me would be: Quality & quantity of historical material also declines precipitously as you get farther from the modern era unless you read Russian. There are lots of good historical sources, but what you'll want depends a lot on what era you want to play in. Think Ravenloft or mythic Romania more than Russia. The Slavic Pathfinder setting is, I think, more rooted in sort of Gothic horror than historic Russia. The proximity to the Chaos Wastes adds a bit of a-historical sources of weirdness and monsters, but the book on the whole gives a nice starting point for setting up an Ivan the Terrible/Great era quasi-Russian campaign setting. Also includes info on the cities, culture, etc. Realm of the Ice Queen was a bit better- it includes a lot of Russian/Slavic/Steppe Nomad themes careers and the Ice Magic and Hag Magic magic systems.
The 1e book has some information about Slavic belief in spirits, but it's comparable to what you could get in a less gamey form from any basic book or article on Slavic mythology. There were two Slavic-theme WFRP books: Something Rotten in Kislev for 1e and Realm of the Ice Queen for 2e. Probably the most historically rooted of the RPG books about Russia/Eastern Europe that I've seen. IIRC, the book is set just before the Timurid invasion when most of the Kieven Rus end up as tributaries of the Mongols, and the book treats the two eras semi-separately. It's good but quite historically oriented- given the era, a lot of familiar things about Russia (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Siberia) are either non-existent or not significant parts of the setting yet. It's from an older edition of Ars Magica, so it may be a little harder to locate but I think the publisher is pretty good about making things available as PDFs. The Dragon and the Bear- the Ars Magica supplement that prosfilaes mentioned- is nice if you're looking for something set in the Middle Ages.
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