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.