Page 65 - The Stans of Central Asia: Turkmenistan & Uzbekistan

By the end of the twelfth century, Turkmenistan had fallen to Genghis Khan and the Mongols.
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engaged in inter-tribal warfare, and they often hired themselves out as mercenaries. They also
developed a fearsome reputation for their involvement in the Central Asian slave trade.

Russian Turkmenistan

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quickly changed after the British Empire began to get involved in the area. Russia entered
into a period known as “The Great Game” in which it constantly competed with Britain for
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of the 19th century until the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, at which time their respective
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to Russian rule in 1885. From 1890 until 1917, Turkmenistan constituted part of Russian
Turkistan—a province that included a mixture of Central Asia’s Muslim nationalities
including: the Kazakhs, the Uzbeks, the Kyrgyz, the Taliks, and the Turkmen. During this time
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continue their traditional nomadic lifestyle for a few more decades.

The Turkmen SSR

The February Revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of the tsarist government in Russia and
the establishment of the Russian Provisional Government. Later that same year, the Bolsheviks
seized power from the provisional government in the October Revolution. They quickly
extended communist control throughout the old Russian Empire, and in the summer of 1918,
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two years later, Turkmenistan joined the Soviet Union as the Turkmen SSR.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin instituted brutal reforms in the
USSR. A nationalist group known as Turkmen Freedom rebelled in protest to these reforms,
and in 1927 they temporarily took control of the republic. Needless to say, Stalin was not
happy with their actions. After regaining control of the Turkmen SSR in 1932, Stalin executed
a purge of the Communist Party there, murdering thousands of people whom he accused of
aiding the nationalists in their insurrection. During World War II, the Soviets reconstructed
many of the factories that had been destroyed in western Russia and the Ukraine in the
Turkmen SSR. As a result, many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians migrated to Turkmenistan to
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Turkmenistan today.
As time progressed, Turkmenistan continued to develop economically. The Soviet Union
instituted a series of irrigation projects throughout the country, and in the 1970s they began
to develop the area’s energy resources. By the 1980s, the grip of communism had eased

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