Problem is: Getting into siberia before you westernize is suicide. As novgorod you can be fully westernized as soon as somebody has 20 tech more than you. For example i westernized from eastern tech and army to western tech and army in 1 month through a great man event and moving the capital to st. petersburg. This was in 1470. I would think muscovy would have a harder time meeting those requirements.
LOL.
Getting into siberia mean you got 100k troops, which mean that asians at best are equal at tech with you, (and propably not, because as
I SAD : GO LT 5 before you conquer GH - to get better modifires) and propably worse.
Good thing of forming russia asap, is that you can westernize much quicker when being russia because of + 2 cent, aspecialy if all your slider moves were on centralization before you formed russia
(it is 2 moves, because you formed russia in 1415).
Then if it is mp you will propably have the russian patriarchate, and go innovate after reaching enough cent to westernize. As you get decision to move +1 on innovate, and and events moving to innovate are pretty frequent, you could sold some uncored province to for example holland, and westernized at 1450, because you lack in tech, because you are not trading country(which is otherwise for for novgordo which is trading country and thus is better with tech, which stops its centralization(because you move free trade) and westernization(because you are better in tech, which mean you got problem with being 20 techs behind)).
In SP it is a lot harder to westernize this way, but you still can do it(you need to try selling kouban to holland XD).
As from forming russia and militia act you get +3 moves to centralization, you need only 3 moves to centralization
(if i am not wrong - wiki says it start with 2 decentralization) and 6 on innovate, which is 9 slider moves. But as you get + on innovate from recruiting act, it changes to 8 moves. If you get one or two events, well you can westernize as soon as holland got 20 techs ahead of you(which is reachable at 1450 propably - if you invest only in land and gov tech).
As you westernize, you just use the decision to move capital to st.petersburg(I tend to rename it with name of current ruler 
), and get +3 stab, and you got +1 stab from which you can easily recover to +3(while waiting for centra moves). I rly dunno why u say that moving into siberia is suicide(as you can just reduce your stab cost by staying serf, and after westernizing moving back to narrowminded if you get events), as orthodox religion got realy low stab cost, and you just convert everything you can to it before you reach +2 innovate(so faster you conquer => faster you can convert => faster you can forget about missionaries(because you reached siberia, which means you own most of muslim horde provinces and propably, you sent missionaries to most of them).
Then you just move make up to maximum centralization, and
all the way back to narrow(for missionaries, which will you need after conquering asians - even if you gone to siberia first you will need them dearly), and
waiting until you get LT 13, so you can westernize your troops(
even if you acquired
muslim cavalry, because it is
better to have your own(
in case you lose muslim provinces XD), plus before
LT 13, westerners,
does not get uber superior infantry...).
And i realy dunno why
getting into siberia before you westernize would be suicide nick. It is like you would say that
early colonization is suicide.
