Abstract
The article examines the positions of key figures from the ethnopolitical elite of Turkestan and the center in solving the problems of nation-building in the first half of the 1920s.The core idea in the views of the Kazakh ethnopolitical elite was the unification of the Turkic peoples of Kazakhstan and Turkestan: from Ryskulov's project of the “Turkic Republic” to the project of the “Central Asian Federation” of S. Khozhan. The twists and turns of the ethnic elites defending their initiatives have been studied in sufficient detail. Ultimately, none of the projects were implemented, despite the nationalists’ attempts to advance them even after the center’s decision to reject the projects. As a result of Bolshevik nation-building in the 1920s, centrally controlled and managed Soviet national republics, autonomies, and autonomous regions emerged, which can be presented as the implementation of the modernist Soviet project for the Central Asian republics.