Most of the world population goes by those rules. They usually end up as laws.
There are a lot of wonderful experiments that didn't get world wide acceptance/traction for whatever odd reasons. And I will not talk (only) about (some) altcoins, I would (also) talk about better ways to store data (much better than DVD), for example. The world goes on and most will not miss that, but for some.. it's a loss.
You do have a good point about proving it works as designed, although imho that was already proven.
Can Russia trigger real adoption? I doubt it. Just look how the "adoption" went in China. They toyed Bitcoin for a while, then kicked it out and started their centralized coin. It has proven to us the Bitcoin resilience, but for the average Chen it's a loss.
And the western banking sector (and it friends) just waits the perfect opportunity/reason to ban their main competitor. And then.. who will adopt Bitcoin?
It's a free world (actually network), that's the beauty of it. And protesting won't help; I don't expect Russian government care at all.
But please allow me still be concerned, OK?
I find Bitcoin now at a thin balance between the experimental status and worldwide adoption. I fear that the critical mass (user base) is not yet achieved and although we both have similar goal for Bitcoin, I'd prefer to "play safe" a little more.
What we have now with Bitcoin is a mix of hope and speculation. Bitcoin's actual value will come after the critical mass is reached and we can go on with or without the current financial sector.
I don't think that you really want that. It would be an immense setback.