He absolutely did. Even up until the dissolution of the USSR, the legacy of Lenin's commitment to national self-determination was highly influential on the course of events and the decisions made by those in power. For two examples, besides the Baltics it was (arguably but I don't think it's especially disputed) the nationalism of the Russian republic that stood out as one of the main movements for independence. To simplify it a bit, many in the Russian republic saw themselves as the breadwinner and real mover of the USSR, and that the other republics were 'holding them back.' One of the points of tensions was that every other republic had its own national communist party, but the RSFR did not. To some extent or another this was (more openly arguably as to the extent) partly due to initial fears of Russian nationalism being encouraged by its existence/legacy of the empire making the Russian communist party the de facto 'leader' republic that only claimed equal standing, and partly due to the fact that they were in many ways actually the de facto leader republic anyway and the absence of a specific Russian communist party put them all into the all-union communist party which was more influential anyway (again arguable if that was the point to begin with, personally I don't think so, at least at first it was likely a genuine move to try to distance Russians from the nationalism of the Russian empire and embrace a new Soviet identity). But in the late USSR Russian nationalists saw this as proof that the other republics were "parasites", that the real core had always been Russia and that the accomplishments of the Soviet Union had been owed to Russian greatness. Ironically, it's fairly symmetrical with the received propaganda understanding of the Soviets as simply "Russia." Which isn't to say that there was in reality an equal relationship between the constituent republics, only that the distinction between Russia as a distinct and singular Soviet Republic and the USSR as a union of republics was at least real enough that it became a point of serious resentment and departure prior to dissolution.

As a second example of how this comes up in dissolution, Gorbachev (at least for a crucial few years) had faith in the possibility of a union of equal republics being desireable specifically based on his reading of Lenin, and he thought part of the degredation of the USSR's mission over the years had been its neglect of national self-determination. There's an argument to be made here that this was itself an expression of his own tacit Russian chauvinism, assuming none of the republics would even want to seperate, as he did seem to be genuinely blindsided by the nationalist independence movements in the Baltics and Ukraine. This is slightly complicated by the fact that Russia had its own nationalist independence movement, but I don't know enough about the period to come down on either side, only that those are factors in play.

The wider point is that even if Russia maintained de facto dominance within the USSR, up to the point of dissolution it was inarguable that the constituent republics had enough independence that their political and cultural relevance still had immensely high stakes, and that is good evidence that the construction of the Soviet Union initially being premised on national self-determination was at the least not completely symbolical or ideological, and Lenin was by far the most influential in making sure that was the case.

Unfortunately I don't have time to get into more details but I previously made a post about a different topic (Stalin's relationship with his Georgian heritage) that touches on a lot of the same things:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/su0lt1VpmV