were more like a temporarily occupied independent nation rather than a Russian vassal state.

That depends on the time period. During Stalin's reign, Estonia was as repressed as any other Soviet region. However, due to economic factors as well as the geographic placement of the republic, Estonians had a lot more exposure to outside countries (Finnish television broadcasting in particular was a big one).

In the 60s and later (with minor bumps), Estonia did start to acquire more freedoms. Of course from the 80s forward, this was largely due to the Soviet central power starting to weaken. However, because Estonia was not as dependent on the USSR economically as, for instance, the "stan" countries, we could afford to fuck with the soviets a lot more (up to a point where we were technically part of the union but our laws overruled theirs in Estonia, though this was right before the USSR collapsed).