Perhaps the Russians surpassed the US in terms of space research and development initially, but the US did more on the moon than plant a flag and play golf. You can't explore someplace you never actually reach in any case.
And as far as Russia being about research and the US being about militarizing space (which you seem to suggest upthread), I'd remind you that the Russians (as far as I know) were the only country to arm one of their space stations and test fire the weapon[1]: To suggest that either the US or Russia weren't keenly interested in using space as leverage against the other, as well as in scientific exploration, is probably not taking the entire picture into consideration.
Especially having more than one space station at the same time. There were Mir and Salut-7, with cosmonauts flying between them, and there were Mir and ISS - without such flights, since they were in the different orbital planes.
> You can't explore someplace you never actually reach in any case.
Meh, the Soviets sent all kinds of robots to the moon. Orbiters, landers that made pictures, moon rovers, three robots that sampled soil and returned it to earth... Not too shabby I'd say.
And as far as Russia being about research and the US being about militarizing space (which you seem to suggest upthread), I'd remind you that the Russians (as far as I know) were the only country to arm one of their space stations and test fire the weapon[1]: To suggest that either the US or Russia weren't keenly interested in using space as leverage against the other, as well as in scientific exploration, is probably not taking the entire picture into consideration.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz
... and yes, having more than one space station puts a check in the Russian column.