The monograph examines the process of forming nations in Central Asia in the 19th - 20th centuries. The author explores topics: the phenomenon of ethnicity; ethnicity and other types of identity - regionalism, Islam, everyday culture and tribal relations; Central Asian nationalism in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and independent post-Soviet states; ethnographic classification of the Central Asian population in the XIX century. and its change in the XX century.; censuses of 1897 and 1926; national-state delimitation in 1924-1925; factors that contributed to the formation of nationalisms in Central Asia; features of Uzbek and Tajik nationalisms; disputes about the nationality of the population of Bukhara and Samarkand; identity in a modernized society, etc.