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How much is their work really known outside Eastern Europe? I lived on outskirts of the SSSR cultural influence (in Yugoslavia), but their books were mostly unknown to us. I discovered them as a kid by a pure chance. I was in a city library, bored (no Internet back then), and had no idea which book to rent... and the title "Hard to be a God" caught my eye. Story seemed interesting enough and it was marked as sci-fi, so I got it to see if it's any good. And well, yes it was, very good, one of my fav books to this day, in matter of fact.
Many of the ex-USSR software engineers have read and adore "Monday Begins on Saturday" which is a humorous and satirical story about a programmer working for the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry. It was written in 1965 when the whole 'programmer' concept was unknown to the majority of population, but that's an altogether different story.
In German, some of their novels were published by a major publisher, Suhrkamp. The movie Stalker is well known, which is based on one of their novels. I'd say they probably were the most prominent USSR SF writers of their time.
I just noticed in the article the passage from "The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn" ("Haven’t you ever noticed how much more interesting the unknown is than the known?") which is missing in the german translation from "edition wunschmaschine". I did a rough comparison based on the amazon preview of the english translation and found some other paragraphs missing in the german translation. This specific german translation was licensed from the former GDR publishing company "Verlag Volk & Welt".
Yes, they were. Many latter generation writers call them Teachers. Yes with capital T.
During the early 2000 I was twenty something working as programmer, when one retired military guy joined the company as DBA. We discussed science fiction, I was fond of Clark, and he mentioned Strugatsky brothers. I started reading it, "It's hard to be a god" was my first book. Then I got swallowed. After that I read "Tachmasib", "Snail on a Slope", "Small boy", "Waves calm down the Wind", "Roadside Picknick", "Dead alpinist Inn", ... [1], basically everything I could find. Reading them leaves so much space and clues for imagination. After every their book my imagination would continue to wander through the universe described in their book.

That's one of the reasons I didn't want to watch a movie based on the Roadside Picknick. I just didn't want to spoil the world of imagination in my head by watching a movie with someone elses imagined world.

Now, they are my favourite science fiction authors, and I'm really sad that not all of their work was translated to a language I can read.

[1] These book might have different English translation. This is just my half-assed translation from my native language.

Roadside Picnic, and Stalker the Tarkovsky film based on it, are very high on my list favorites. Roadside Picnic is kind of parallel to Clark's Rendezvous with Rama. They're both about a chance encounter with alien life, or more specifically, the technological trappings of alien life. And both stress out insignificance and ultimately irrelevance to the more highly developed aliens. Rendezvous with Rama strikes me as more optimistic, I think because the protagonists are all high up the ladder--chosen astronauts. The protagonists of Roadside Picnic are akin to black market smugglers, and that creates a dirtier world, and makes our position relative to the never seen aliens seem so much more puny and underdeveloped.
Roadside Picnic was well written and fascinating, but a really depressing read. There is so much poetic melancholy in that book.
It seems like neither Inn nor even Piknic (which is a true masterpiece) is the their most profound work. I would suggest "Snail On a Slope" (which I have read at least 10 times) and especially "Ugly Swans" - these novels, it seems, has the brother's philosophy fully developed and refined.

The Roadside Piknic is the first enlightenment, so to speak, the bold conclusion that there is no way out, but selfless wish for happiness to everyone as the only way to hypothetically change the world (the way of the East - to focus on inner rather than social development, in hope that a proper social system will naturally follow, at least to some extent - the way of Gita or Spinoza, the way of India, and some Buddhist countries).

> the way of the East - to focus on inner rather than social development

I think it's not the way of the East but more like an image created by westerners.

You will break this illusion by simply visiting Thailand, India, Korea or Japan. And it's hard to imagine more materialistic culture than Chinese.

I'm not saying the ideas of Hinduism or Buddhism are bad but look how people actually interpret them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma

There are huge differences between India and Burma. And, of course, the context here is these thousands of years of development of Indian civilization before British.

Of course, every good insight about the proper way of living, be it of Upabishads, of Buddha or of Christ has been ruined by social institutions made by its "followers" to get a decent living out of it.

Nevertheless, the emphasis on inner rather than social development is an essence of the Indian culture.

As for China - it is too complicated. In times of the early dynasties they cultivated the same virtues - like statesmanship only for the best educated, etc but China is too big and too diverse and too dynamic to speak about it as one entity.

> Near the beginning of The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, a 1970 novel by the Russian science-fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, the innkeeper, Alek Snevar, proposes to his guest, police inspector Peter Glebsky, that mystery is always preferable to explanation.

That's the characterization of their whole work. The single thread running through all their books. They don't explain everything. They always leave something there to marvel at.

Arthur C. Clarke also did this. It's the hallmark of the best science fiction.

"It's Hard to Be a God" is an awesome book, too
Another great science fiction author from the USSR's sphere of influence is Stanislaw Lem from Poland - Tarkovsky also adapted a book of his - Solaris, which I personally find to be one of Lem's weaker works.
_The futurological congress_ is probably the most incredible SF book I've read. Absolutely fantastic. And don't spoil it by reading the Wikipedia entry, just run read it.
It's really promising that they are translated and published again. They are clearly underappreciated globally.
The were widespread known in bulgaria in the 80´, and we even got "Понедельник начинается в субботу" in russian classes at this time.