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Soviet Union [USSR] Turkmens
The Orguz Turks, forebears of the Soviet Turkmens, migrated
into the territory of the present-day Turkmen Republic at the end
of the tenth century and beginning of the eleventh century.
Composed of many tribes, they began their migration from eastern
Asia in the seventh century and moved slowly toward the Middle East
and Central Asia. By the twelfth century, they had become the
dominant group in the present-day Turkmen Republic, assimilating
the original Iranian population as well other invaders who preceded
them into the area. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Orguz
tribes had developed a common language and traditions, and by the
fifteenth century they were recognizable as a single people.
Although they often became subjects of a neighboring state, their
military skills and pastoral culture enabled them to enjoy an
independent existence. Forced into a cooperative and defensive
alliance first by the Mongol invasion and then by the Uzbek
conquest, the Turkmens nevertheless retained their strong tribal
divisions and failed to establish a lasting state of their own.
The Turkmens opposed Russian expansion into Central Asia more
vigorously than other nationalities. They defeated a Russian force
in 1717, when Peter the Great first attempted the conquest of
Central Asia. And, in the nineteenth century, when the Russians
resumed their expansion into the area, Turkmen cavalry posed
determined and prolonged opposition. The conquest of Turkmenia
(also known as Turkestan) was not completed until 1885, and the
territorial boundary of Russian Turkmenia was not set until a
decade later by an Anglo-Russian border treaty. That treaty
separated the Turkmens of Russia from the roughly equal number of
their brethren in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Turkey.
Turkmenia became part of Russian Turkestan and was treated by
the tsarist government as a colonial territory where Russians and
other Slavs were encouraged to settle. A railroad was built, and
other features of modernity were introduced. Turkmens resented
losing their grazing land and in 1916 joined a Muslim uprising
throughout Russia's Central Asian territory.
After the February Revolution of 1917, several political forces
competed for power in Turkmenia. The Turkmens were divided between
Islamic traditionalists and the more progressive nationalist
intelligentsia. At this time, both Bolshevik and White armies
sought the loyalty of Turkmenia's Russian population. A provisional
government, established by Turkmen nationalists with support of the
White forces and limited British assistance, was able to maintain
itself against the Bolsheviks until mid-1919. Thereafter, Turkmen
resistance against the Bolsheviks was part of the general Basmachi
Rebellion, which reemerged sporadically until 1931. By 1920,
however, the Red Army controlled the territory, and in 1924 the
Turkmen Republic was established in accordance with the national
delimitation process in Central Asia.
The Soviet policy of forced collectivization in the late 1920s
and early 1930s was particularly abhorrent to the nomadic Turkmens.
It led to enhanced national self-awareness and an opposition
movement, which burst into an open rebellion in 1928-32. In
response, Soviet authorities arrested scores of native communist
leaders and broad segments of the Turkmen intelligentsia. Most
perished in the Great Terror of the 1930s.
The great majority of the over 2.7 million Soviet Turkmens
lived in the Turkmen Republic, the least populous of the Soviet
Central Asian republics. Turkmens constituted nearly 72 percent of
the republic's 3.5 million population. Russians and Uzbeks were the
largest minorities.
The Turkmen language, which developed from several Turkic
dialects and has adopted some Arabic, Persian, and Russian
loanwords, belongs to the southern group of Turkic languages. In
the 1989 census, about 98.5 percent of the Turkmens considered it
their first language. Only slightly more than 25 percent of the
Turkmens had fluency in Russian.
In 1987 Turkmens were more rural than urban, even though the
population of the Turkmen Republic, which included a large number
of highly urban Russians, was almost evenly divided between urban
and rural residents. The Turkmen Republic had only a few large
cities in 1989. Ashkhabad, the capital, had a population of
398,000; only Chardzhou and Tashauz also had populations over
100,000.
In 1971 Turkmens were fourteenth among the seventeen major
nationalities in the number of students in higher education
institutions and twelfth in the number of scientific workers per
thousand. In 1986 the Turkmen Republic ranked tenth among the union
republics in the number of students in higher education per
thousand.
Turkmens were among the least represented nationalities in the
CPSU. In 1984 they ranked thirteenth among the union republics.
Data as of May 1989
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