This is an interesting question, because it really forces us to define what we mean by "advanced." Unquestionably scientists working in Russia made some tremendously notable discoveries at the cutting edge of many fields: Mendeleev's periodic table, Pavlov's work on reflexes, Dokuchaev on soil science, Tsiolkovskii and early rocketry. At the same time, two things are also true. The Russian scientific establishment was, in absolute terms, less successful than those of Britain, France, or Prussia/Germany, despite a comparable degree of geopolitical importance. It was also far more successful than those of other countries with a comparable level of economic development. By the way, I wouldn't say that Russia was technologically backward, at least in the sense that a civilization in Civ might be said to not possess Industrialization or Combustion. All the advanced technologies of Victorian Europe were available in Russia, in some cases being used in particularly innovative ways. The problem was that they were not well-distributed throughout the population, especially in the case of agricultural technology. A similar situation obtained in the case of science. The Russian government invested a tremendous amount of money and personnel in foreign experts and technologies to staff the Academy of Sciences, which also provided particularly talented native-born Russians with social mobility. It was much harder to generate an educated demographic at all proportional to the size of the population. Although zemstvo schools helped a lot in the aftermath of emancipation, the level of popular literacy remained too low and the social barriers remained too high to allow, say, a former serf with scientific talent to actually become a working scientist. So whether or not it was advanced depends on what criteria you want to use to evaluate it: compared to its neighbors? in terms of unique discoveries? compared to its potential? There are a lot of possible answers.

The way that Loren Graham characterizes it (in his excellent Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History) is that Russian science was indeed somewhat "backwards" compared to Europe, and that they themselves saw themselves that way. Choosing Europe as a comparative is something they themselves would have done and aspired to. The promotion of Russian science by Peter the Great was very explicit about this, and produced odd results: Russia had an Academy of Sciences (1724) before they had a university (Moscow State University, 1755). That is, Peter was trying to import the fruits of a Western scientific model but not the system that had produced it in the first place. As a result, even into the 19th century many Russians of scientific merit generally got the educations outside of Russia (e.g. Lomonosov and Pavlov did their early work in Germany). Science under tsarist rule was not seen as an entirely respectable occupation, if I recall from Graham — it was seen as too hands-dirtying for true gentlemen. Nevertheless it did make some strong inroads and did enjoy some state patronage. When the Soviets took over they initially held the sciences and scientists very high, especially those that focused on practical matters of use to the state. Things got considerably difficult under the Stalin years, as you probably know, but that was not unique to science.