Around the same time, the Soviet Union created a Latin alphabet for the Central Asian states that it occupied: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The decision to replace the Arabic alphabet was amdre to remove religious influence in Central Asia and to modernise the region. For a time, Soviet leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, believed the Latin alphabet was the "world alphabet" because it was the writing system of most developed countries. However, the Soviet Union then required the Central Asian states to write only in the Cyrillic script. That was to influence local cultures and languages to become more like those of Russia. 