I beg to differ. The deed was done within the confines of a crushing dictatorship, with little or no money to back the research, and in a society that otherwise expects mediocrity. The idea described in the story was like seeing a sparkling 5-carat diamond in the middle of a cesspool.
As for your example in the US space program, it was brilliant as well. And nobody is disparaging the quality of the minds in US universities and in the US space program. But, where we can pretty much always afford to launch another spacecraft to garner the same data, Russians have to get creative to do the same thing in many cases.
I am an American, and I am proud to be one. But, I firmly believe in giving credit where credit is due. The fact that a country almost completely devastated by World War II, crippled by a horrible form of government, and suffering under institutional corruption that makes our occasional bad cop or public official look like the Knights of the Round Table missed beating us to the Moon by an eyelash in time is extraordinary. I have a firm respect for Russians in general and their intelligence and enterpreneurial spirit in particular.