Most of the canon for Russia is, sadly, not IC.

This is the gist of it, though:

During the final years of WWI, the Russian Empire withdrew its forces and squashed the communist rebellion at home. This means that Nicholas II was never overthrown, and the civil war was prevented/delayed. Nicholas II would go to rule over Russia for decades, adopting a deeply anti-communist stance that resulted in the suppression of any kind of workers movement, or threat to the Tsarist regime. He rolled back some of the limitations that had been placed on his power in the early 1900s and Russia became a full-on autocracy again. His son followed his footsteps, but was not as strong of a leader, which allowed for communists to slowly resurface again and chip away at his power, culminating with his assassination a few years before the RP start date.

The assassination of the Tsar threw Russia into civil war and split it up into a multitude or warring states. The Imperial government withdrew to Petrograd/St.Petersburg and the surviving heir was brought forward to become the new Tsar. Since then, Imperial Russia has more or less been in a standoff against other Russian states, mainly Moscow. In Moscow, the children of an old Imperial general came to power and turned it into another Tsardom, but those are not legitimate heirs because they aren't related to the Romanovs. Ukraine became independent after the death of the Tsar and became a Hetmanate. In Akangelsk there are some socialists in power. Nothing else on that side of the Urals is controlled by a player, but basically imagine it as a big mess of competing states of varying ideologies, in constant war. In between all that there are warlords and criminals doing stuff.

Japan has a foothold on the east side of the Urals, and China has been snooping around getting ready to invade Siberia. Beyond that, there isn't much else to say.

As for your idea... You're free to do whatever you want, so you can play as a small group if that's what you're interested in, but if you can you should probably do something a little bigger than that. In my experience, limiting yourself will result in you running into a lot of dead-ends with what you can realistically do on a scale that small. Don't be afraid to snatch one of the Russian states. You can change the borders a bit if you want, as long as it's within reason.

If you want to ask specifics about Russia, you can PM me if you want.