I'm looking for some info about Mongol Administration of conquered territories, specifically Russia under the Golden Horde  (1200s-1500).  Does anyone know any good resources, either in print or online?  Does anyone know anything about this?

How sucessful were the Mongols in controlling Rus?

Well, what I want to know is how did the Mongols administer Russia?  Did they leave it up to the Russians and only govern through taxes or were there Mongol troops stationed everywhere, in all the main city-states?  Were the Mongols a positive influence on the development of Russia or were they damaging to the development of Russian identity?

Did they do things like initiate a postal service and develop roads, or was that the work of the Russians themselves?

AFAIK most principalties were governed by Russian princes, only the Steppe itself was under direct Mongol rule (which was rather common ongol practice). the Russian princes however had to pay tribute and were the vassals of the Mongol rulers. Mongols did not station their troops in Russian territory, that would have been impossible because a horse-based army has to stay in the Steppe.

whether or not the Mongol rule over Russia was good or not can hardly be answered, at least to the Russians it was the worst time in their histroy, so we can asume it was for the worser, but you can't deny the advantages that have been borught to Russia, like advanced warfare and eventually the later Asian conquests of the Russian empire.

I've heard that the Mongols were instrumental in keeping German Teutonic Knights from invading and (possibly) conquering Russia.  Wouldn't the Teutonic Knights have forced conversion to Catholicism and therefore completely altered Russian identity?  Would that make Mongols defenders of Russian identity (in a sort of twisted way)?

Russians had great autonomy under the Golden Horde. When they were conquered, they were basically a number of principalities. The chiefs of those principalities had authority over their fiefdoms and had to collect taxes and give them to the khan. The khans also gave Moscow's chiefs bigger priveleges and they were supposed to collect all the taxes from all other principalities. Troops were not stationed in russian fiefdoms but punitive raids were often, when taxes were delayed etc. But mostly, Moscow ruled Russia for the horde. When Moscow itself rebelled it was raided, quite a number of times that happened I think. For the most of the time though moscowite rulers were very loyal to the horde.

Before the mongols came, Moscow was a small fortress town, pretty insignificant, but during the rule of Golden Horde it became the center of Russia and later Russian empire was basically that of Moscow. I guess that'd be the main impact.

The mongols left the princes on their own as long as they paid their dues yearly. The golden horde is unique in that there was a stable arrangement between nomads and the sedentary people that worked really well. The mongols just stuck to the steppes while the sedentary folks(russians) were left alone in the cities like novgorod. All the other parts of the mongol empire there was a really struggle between accomodating the nomads and the sedentary folks.