There's a rather large value judgement implicit in the question, as you're probably aware.

I assume this question refers to the peripheral conflicts of the Russian Civil War, from 1917-1921.

However, Lenin's conception of "freedom" was rather different from the Woodrow Wilson version; the bolsheviks were expecting a worldwide revolution to overthrow capitalism. This included recognizing the independence of Finland, and generally acknowledging self-determination "for all the People's of Russia", including the right to complete independence.

But they also wanted to liberate the rest of Europe, not to mention India, Africa and the rest of the world. They expected that to be the work of local revolutionaries rather than invasion. As historian E.H.Carr notes, the bolsheviks didn't want Moscow to be the capital of the USSR ; they wanted it to be Berlin or Paris.

Now, that brings us to the Russian Civil War, when Russia's periphery started to crumble, partially due to local nationalist forces but with a lot of help from the Kaiser. The governments of little crumbs were, well...nobody. Most of them hadn't been elected and didn't have much more legitimacy than the Bolsheviks. In most cases local revolutionaries set up opposition Soviet Republics or similar bodies(like the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic) and declared themselves the real governments.In some cases it worked, in others not.

A different situation played out in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920, which usually gets brought up as an example of Red imperialism. That might be a fair assessment, if Poland hadn't attacked first. Marshal Pilsudski, Poland's future dictator, invaded Soviet Ukraine to create a buffer state against the Soviets. Russia invaded back, and got as far as Warsaw.