This thesis evaluates the sociological consequences for Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Turkmenistan and Tadzhikistan) of the 'federal compromise' that was set out by Lenin and which became incorporated into the fundamental ideology of the Soviet Union. The thesis therefore investigates the types of political and economic structures that existed prior to the Soviet Union, concluding that supra-national and sub-national identities pre-dominated over national identities. It is then argued that, due to the Soviet Union's adherence to Marxist/Leninist ideology on the 'national question' each of the major ethnographically defined nations within the Central Asian region had a state apparatus bestowed upon them. Within each of these states 'modernisation' has led to the imposition of a 'high culture' over the local 'low cultures' that existed prior to the revolution. A uniform culture has been spread within the titular nationalities by the state via a standardised literacy and education-based system of communication. The thesis concludes that to some extent a process of nation-building has occurred within the five states of Soviet Central Asia. However, the process has been adversely affected by three influences: the concomitant Russification of the population; the treatment of nationalism as a transitory phenomenon and the subsequent clampdown on so called 'national excesses'; and, lastly, the underdevelopment of the region as a result of the economic integration into the Soviet Union and the division of labour that followed from this. The study therefore concludes that the nation-building process has not necessarily led to the creation of nation-states where the primary loyalty of the people is to the nation (which is said to pertain in the 'ideal-type' nation-state).