I wouldn't call this Russian team great. They showed many moments of poor play in the intercontinental round and lost to Canada in the finals. The level of play hasn't been great but there are a lot of new faces and players and that is to be expected the season following an Olympic cycle.
The Russian team is a joke. Yes, Pavlov is arguably the best opposite in the world at the moment (!) and this is probably his only chance to win a major international competition, due to the citizenship issues. But otherwise they have out of shape Grankin and Muserskiy and seriously out of shape Mikhailov on the bench. Both Alexeys (Verbov and Spirik), though very talented players, have been deservedly kicked out of the national team by Alekno. Verbov is known to be a total disaster for the team spirit... and Spirik got famous for using the other kind of spirit on the regular basis :). Sivozhelez, Zhilin and Apalikov are all middle-age bench-players. They all have exceptionally strong and stable service but otherwise should not appear in the top-level matches. Sivo and Zhilin normally struggle with a single block when hitting from four, and their reception is usually poor. Aschev is by far a better blocker and middle attacker than Apalikov.
This team reminds me of Bulgaria at London Olympics: they lacked talent but at the same time they were not under big pressure. I think the Russian team from the Universiade would have no problems beating this nominally first team. Would be actually nice to see a game between the two :).