TheTurkmen Soviet Socialist Republic[a], also known asSoviet Turkmenistan, theTurkmen SSR,TuSSR,Turkmenistan, orTurkmenia, was one of theconstituent republics of theSoviet Union, located inCentral Asia, that existed as a republic from 1925 to 1991. Initially, on 7 August 1921, it was established as the Turkmen Oblast of theTurkestan ASSR before being made, on 13 May 1925, a separate republic of the USSR as the Turkmen SSR.
Since its creation, the borders of Soviet Turkmenia remained unchanged. On 22 August 1990, the republic declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. On 27 October 1991, it becameindependent as Turkmenistan.
Russian attempts to encroach upon Turkmen territory began in earnest in the latter part of the nineteenth century.[2] In 1869, theRussian Empire established a foothold in present-day Turkmenistan with the foundation of theCaspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk (nowTürkmenbaşy).[2] From there and other points, they marched on and subdued theKhiva Khanate in 1873.[2] Because Turkmen tribes, most notably theYomut, were in the military service of theKhanate of Khiva, Russian forces undertook punitive raids againstKhwarazm, in the process slaughtering hundreds of Turkmen and destroying their settlements.[2] In 1881, the Russians under GeneralMikhail Skobelev besieged and capturedGeok Tepe, one of the last Turkmen strongholds, northwest ofAshgabat.[2] With the Turkmen defeat (which is now marked by the Turkmen as anational day of mourning and a symbol of national pride), the annexation of what is present-day Turkmenistan took the Russian Empire repeated attempts after failing the first time. Later the same year, the Russians signed theTreaty of Akhal withQajar Iran and established what essentially remains the current border between Turkmenistan and Iran.[2] In 1897, a similar agreement was signed between the Russians and Afghans.[2]
Following annexation to Russia, the area was administered as theTranscaspian Region by corrupt and malfeasant military officers and officials appointed by theTurkestan Governor-Generalship inTashkent.[2] In the 1880s, a railroad was built from Krasnovodsk toAshgabat and later extended to Tashkent.[2] Urban areas began to develop along the railway.[2] Although the Transcaspian Region essentially was a colony of Russia, it remained a backwater, except for Russian concerns with British colonialist intentions in the region and with possible uprisings by the Turkmen.[2]
Due to the Turkmens being generally indifferent to theadvent of Soviet rule in 1917, relatively little revolutionary activity occurred in the region in the years that followed the October Revolution.[3] However, the years immediately preceding the revolution had been marked by sporadic Turkmen uprisings against Russian rule, most prominently theCentral Asian revolt of 1916 that that erupted as a result of large-scale forced conscriptions of local (ethnic Turkish) inhabitants to theImperial Russian Army (which, after the outbreak ofWorld War I, required large number of conscripts from all over theRussian Empire) and swept through the whole ofTurkestan.[3] Turkmens' armed resistance to Soviet rule was part of the largerBasmachi movement, apan-Turkish andIslamist uprising against the Russian and Soviet dictatorship that swept throughout the majority ofCentral Asia from the 1920s into the early 1930s.[3][4] Battles between Soviet troops and local resistance fighters were fierce; however, in the end, the SovietRed Army, supported byAfghan auxiliaries, violently suppressed the rebellion, resulting in a large number of ethnicTurkmens losing their lives in the battles.[5][6] Individuals who played significant roles in the revolt were Paul Morrismovich and his accomplices, Admirals Maxim Whitnapov and Matviy Mamenovik.[3] Soviet sources describe this struggle as a minor chapter in the republic's history.[3]
In October 1924, when thePolitburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dividedUSSR's Central Asian territories into distinct ethno-national political entities, theTranscaspian Oblast of theTurkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkestan ASSR) along with theCharjew,Kerki and a part of the Shirabad provinces of theBukharan People's Republic and the Turkmen (Daşoguz) province ofKhorezm People's Republic were unified to create the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen SSR), a full-fledged constituent republic of the Soviet Union where ethnic Turkmens made up approximately 80% of the republic's population.[3][7] During the forcedcollectivization and settlement of nomadic and semi-nomadic groups along with other socioeconomic changes of the first decades of Soviet rule, pastoral nomadism ceased to be an economic alternative in Turkmenistan. Consequently, by the late 1930s, the lifestyle of the majority of Turkmens had changed, becoming sedentary.[3] Efforts by the Soviet state to undermine the traditional Turkmen way of life resulted in significant changes in familial and political relationships, religious and cultural observances, and intellectual developments.[3] Significant numbers of Russians and other Europeans, as well as groups from various nationalities, mainly from theCaucasus, migrated to urban areas.[3] Modest industrial capabilities were developed, and limited exploitation of Turkmenistan's natural resources was initiated.[3]
Under Soviet rule, all religious beliefs were attacked by the communist authorities as superstition and "vestiges of the past."[8] Most religious schooling and religious observance were banned, and the vast majority of mosques were closed.[8] An officialMuslim Board of Central Asia with a headquarters in Tashkent was established duringWorld War II to supervise the Islamic faith in Central Asia.[8] For the most part, the Muslim Board functioned as an instrument of propaganda whose activities did little to enhance the Muslim cause.[8] Atheist indoctrination stifled religious development and contributed to the isolation of the Turkmen from the international Muslim community.[8] Some religious customs, such as Muslim burial and malecircumcision, continued to be practiced throughout the Soviet period, but most religious beliefs, knowledge, and customs were preserved only in rural areas in "folk form" as a kind of unofficial Islam not sanctioned by the state-run Spiritual Directorate.[8]
Soviet soldiers returning fromAfghanistan. 20 October 1986,Kushka, Turkmen SSR.
The Soviet regime's policy of indigenization (korenizatsiia) involved the promotion of national culture and language and the creation of a native administration for each ethnic group in its own territory.[9] During the 1920s, as happened throughout the Soviet Union, there was forthright support and funding for the creation of native language theatres, publishing houses, newspapers as well as universal public schooling, and this was the case for the Turkmen minorities during Soviet administration of Turkmen/Transcaspian province of the Turkestan ASSR and theBukharan People's Republic and theKhorezm (Kivan) People's Republic and continued after the creation of the majority-Turkmen national republic.
In the 1920s the Turkmen SSR standardised the Turkmen language (as prior to this, the vast majority of the population was not literate and those that were tended to use theChaghtai or Persian languages for writing, though in the late 19th and early 20th century there was growing interest in the use of Ottoman Turkish register for writing as it is an Oghuz language and closer linguistically). Rigorous debate in the national press and in various literary and educational journals over Teke, Yomut, and other regional and tribal dialects was followed by centralised decision-making around the creation of a particular national standard, the simplification of the Arabo-Persian alphabet, and the eventual transition to the Cyrillic alphabet.[10]
Beginning in the 1930s, Moscow kept the republic under firm control.[11] The nationalities policy of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) fostered the development of a Turkmen political elite and promotedRussification.[11] The previous nationality policies of the 1920s and early 1930s involved promoting the use of the Turkmen language for administration in all areas of the state, party, and economy (along with the longer-lasting system of preferential quotas and advancement for ethnic Turkmen in government, party, and industrial jobs with the aim of achieving a majority Turkmen bureaucracy) and attempts at requiring non-Turkmen to learn the Turkmen language.[9] From the 1930s onward, the nationality policy favoured use of the Turkmen language in areas of government "closest to the people": education, health, etc., paired with an acceptance that knowledge of the Russian language would be required for most government work as well as advancement in many careers: the government would no longer work to make knowledge of Russian superfluous to advancement and would cease active efforts to have Turkmen be the language of administration, and from 1938 onwards non-Russian students throughout the Soviet Union would be required to become fluent in Russian in order to advance through secondary and tertiary education.
Non-Turkmen cadre both in Moscow and Turkmenia closely supervised the national cadre of government officials and bureaucrats; generally, the Turkmen leadership staunchly supported Soviet policies.[11] Moscow initiated nearly all political activity in the republic, and, except for a corruption scandal in the mid-1980s that ousted longtime First SecretaryMuhammetnazar Gapurow, Turkmenistan remained a quiet Soviet republic.[11]Mikhail Gorbachev's policies ofglasnost andperestroika did not have a significant impact on Turkmenistan, as many people there were self-dependent, and settlers of the territory and the Soviet Union's ministers rarely intertwined.[11] The republic found itself rather unprepared for the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence that followed in 1991.[11]
When other constituent republics of the Soviet Union advanced claims to sovereignty in 1988 and 1989, Turkmenia's leadership also began to criticize Moscow's economic and political policies as exploitative and detrimental to the well-being and pride of the Turkmen.[11] By a unanimous vote of its Supreme Soviet, Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in August 1990.[11] In March 1991, Turkmenistan participated in the internationally observedreferendum on the future of the Soviet Union, where 98% percent of participants voted in support of the preservation of the Soviet Union. After theAugust 1991 coup in Moscow, Turkmenia's communist leaderSaparmurat Niyazov called for a popular referendum on independence.[11] The official result of the referendum was 94 percent in favor of independence.[11] The republic's Supreme Soviet then declared Turkmenistan's independence from the Soviet Union and the establishment of theRepublic of Turkmenistan on 27 October 1991.[11] Turkmenistan gained independence from the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991.[citation needed]
The politics of Turkmenistan took place within the framework of aone-partysocialistrepublic. TheSupreme Soviet was aunicamerallegislature of the republic headed by a chairman, with its superiority to both the executive and judicial branches, and its members held regular meetings inAshkhabad.
During its existence, the Turkmen SSR's industrial production grew rapidly. By the early 1980s, leading industries in the Turkmen SSR includedagriculture,gas andpetroleum,chemicals,construction, andmining.[12]: 81 Official government statistics from this time claimed that industrial production grew 75 times from pre-Soviet times, and petroleum production grew 114 times from pre-Soviet times.[12]: 81
Major agricultural products within the Turkmen SSR included the production ofcotton,grapes, andmaize.[12]: 81 TheKarakum Canal was constructed to aid in agricultural production within the Turkmen SSR.[12]: 81 Animal husbandry was also an important area of the economy of the Turkmen SSR, including the raising ofcattle,sheep, andhorses.[12]: 81 TheAkhal-Teke andIomud horse breeds were prominent within the Turkmen SSR.[12]: 81
AlthoughSufism in theSoviet Union was outlawed,[13]: 1 it remained present throughoutSoviet Central Asia, including in the Turkmen SSR.[13]: 24 Compared to elsewhere in Soviet Central Asia, Sufism was especially prominent in the Turkmen SSR, which had fewer officially-sanctionedmosques than its neighbors,[13]: 25 where it created a "parallel spiritual hierarchy" which rivaled officially-sanctioned Islamic networks.[13]: 29 TheKubrawiyatariqa was practiced in the northern portion of the Turkmen SSR.[13]: 24 Sufism in the Turkmen SSR was intertwined withtribal identity within the republic, and all members of certain tribes considered themselves "Sufi adepts".[13]: 26
Prior to the advent of the Soviet Union,illiteracy in the area was commonplace, and fewpublic education facilities andlibraries existed.[12]: 81–82 The government of the Turkmen SSR claimed to have "wiped out" illiteracy in the Turkmen SSR.[12]: 81 Government statistics reported the number of public libraries in the Turkmen SSR rose from just 42 in 1929, to 647 in 1940, and to over 3,000 by the early 1980s.[12]: 82 Prominent libraries in the Turkmen SSR included the Karl Marx State Library of the Turkmen SSR, the Central Research Library of the TSSR Academy of Sciences, the Republican Library for Science and Technology of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information and Propaganda of the TSSR Planning Committee, the Republican Scientific Medicine Research Library, the Republican Children's Library, and the Republic Juvenile Library.[12]: 83–84
Due to the relativelyrural andpastoral nature of the Turkmen SSR, government education services included mobile libraries andbook talks aimed at rural people.[12]: 86
When theSoviets came to power in 1920s, Turkmens were required to add a Russian suffix to their names.[citation needed] The ending ev/ov was added to male names and eva/ova to female names.[citation needed] InRussian, these endings mean "belonging to", which was part of the effort to promote the idea of a unifiedSoviet people.[citation needed]
Prior toSoviet times, the practice ofkalym, or abride price, was common in the area.[14]: 94 This practice was outlawed in the 1920s, and made a criminal offense.[14]: 94 By the 1930s, the practice virtually disappeared.[14]: 94 During the late 1980s, amidperestroika,kalym became commonplace again.[14]: 95
^Turkmen:Түркменистан Совет Социалистик Республикасы,romanized: Türkmenistan Sowet Sotsialistik Respublikasy;Russian:Туркменская Советская Социалистическая Республика,romanized: Turkmenskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika
^abcdefClark, Larry, Michael Thurman, and David Tyson. "Turkmenistan: History and Structure". InCurtis 1997, p. 320.
^abMartin, Terry (2001).The affirmative action empire : nations and nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.ISBN1-5017-1332-9.OCLC606578236.
Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2006).Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton University Press.ISBN1-306-04622-X.OCLC1091486335.
Kurbanov, Seitnazar. 1982. "Information and Bibliographical Activities of the Leading Libraries of the Turkmen SSR."Libri: International Journal of Libraries & Information Services 32 (June): 81–90.
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