You have a good point. I just wanted to add that Baltic States haven't even been the most liberal/democratic part of USSR. In fact, some of the Latvian authors had to go publish their works in Moscow/St. Petersburg, because it wasn't possible in Latvian SSR. Speaking with older generations here, and I mean native Latvians/Estonians who had studied in Moscow/St. Petersburg, they often mention culture shock which they experienced there, as there was the whole Counterculture thing going on in Russia which was unheard of in Baltics.