Түркімен Совет Социалистік Республикасының тарихы (Türkimen Sovet Sosialistik Respublikasynyń tarihy)

Constituent republic of the Soviet Union (1925–1991)

The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Түркменистан Совет Социалистик Республикасы, Türkmenistan Sowet Sotsialistik Respublikasy; Туркменская Советская Социалистическая Республика, Turkmenskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika), also known as Soviet Turkmenistan, the Turkmen SSR, Turkmenistan, or Turkmenia, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union located in Central Asia existed as a republic from 1925 to 1991. Initially, on 7 August 1921, it was established as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR before being made, on 13 May 1925, a separate republic of the USSR as the Turkmen SSR. Since then the borders of the Turkmenia were unchanged. On 22 August 1990, Turkmenia declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. On 27 October 1991, it became independent as Turkmenistan. Geographically, Turkmenia was bordered between Iran, Afghanistan to the south, Caspian Sea to the west, the Kazakh SSR to the north and the Uzbek SSR to the east.

Russian attempts to encroach upon Turkmen territory began in earnest in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1869 the Russian Empire established a foothold in present day Turkmenistan with the foundation of the Caspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy). Soviet sources describe this struggle as a minor chapter in the republic's history. During the forced collectivization 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, and by the late 1930s, the majority of Turkmen had become sedentary.

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. 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 the Bukharan People's Republic and the Khorezm (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 the Chaghtai 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. Beginning in the 1930s, Moscow kept the republic under firm control. 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. By a unanimous vote of its Supreme Soviet, Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in August 1990. In March 1990, Turkmenistan participated in the internationally observed referendum on the future of the Soviet Union, where 98% percent of participants voted in support of the preservation of the Soviet Union. After the August 1991 coup in Moscow, Turkmenia's communist leader Saparmurat Niyazov called for a popular referendum on independence. The official result of the referendum was 94 percent in favor of independence. The republic's Supreme Soviet then declared Turkmenistan's independence from the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Republic of Turkmenistan on 27 October 1991. Turkmenistan gained independence from the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991.

There were two active space facilities in Turkmenistan, in the cities of Turkmenabat and Seydi, both equipped for launch. The Soviet Space Programme had manufactured Proton, Mir and Soyuz rockets and crew bomber missiles during the Cold War.

Much of Turkmenistan infrastructure were built out during the Soviet period, such as new cities, institutions, buildings, roads, power stations, hospitals, schools, and factories.

When the Soviets came to power in 1920s, People had to add a Russian suffix to their names. The ending ev/ov was added to male names and eva/ova to female names. In Russian, these endings mean "belonging to", which was part of the effort to promote the idea of a unified Soviet people.

As with the other Soviet republics, Turkmenistan had followed the Marxist–Leninist ideology governed by the republic's sole party, Communist Party of Turkmenistan, a republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The politics of Turkmenistan took place in the framework of a one party socialist republic. The Supreme Soviet was a unicameral legislature of the republic headed by a chairman, with its superiority to both the executive and judicial branches and its members meet in Ashkhabad.

98% of Turkmenistan was Muslim, but atheism was the state religion. In the early 1920s, the Soviet government effectively banned Islam in Soviet Central Asia, including Turkmenistan, every mosque was destroyed, books written in Arabic script were burned, in the 1930s Turkmenistan had eventually adapted the cyrillic alphabet.