This article examines the issues of the delimitation of Central Asia and the process of creating Soviet statehood on the territory of Turkestan, conducted by the Bolsheviks in the mid-20s of the XX century. The national policy of the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s was characterized by the desire to correlate their strategy of building socialism with the discourse on the national question in a particular national region. The growth of local "nationalisms" in the national outskirts, observed after the revolution, led the Bolsheviks to the conclusion that ignoring the national aspirations of the natives could lead to their strengthening. Strategically, nationalism was perceived by the Bolsheviks as an obstacle to the formation of proletarian internationalism. This forced the Soviet government to take measures to prevent nationalism and pan-Turkism in Central Asia. The result in this direction was the implementation in 1924-1925 of the national-territorial demarcation on the territory of the Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm republics. The process of dividing a huge region into parts took place in the most difficult, dramatic passions. The disengagement radically affected the fate of the peoples living in Soviet Central Asia. This process, in turn, played a role in the emergence and preservation of interstate and interethnic contradictions for many decades. In 1924-1925, the Soviet future of the Kazakh ASSR, founded in 1920, was also very difficult to build. The supreme establishment of Kazakhstan actively participated in fierce disputes over the borders of its southern regions.