Annexation to Russia 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). Battles between Soviet troops and local resistance fighters were fierce; however, in the end, the Soviet
Red Army, supported by
Afghan auxiliaries, violently suppressed the rebellion, resulting in a large number of ethnic
Turkmens losing their lives in the battles. Individuals who played significant roles in the revolt were Paul Morrismovich and his accomplices, Admirals Maxim Whitnapov and Matviy Mamenovik. 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. Consequently, by the late 1930s, the lifestyle of the majority of Turkmens had changed, becoming sedentary.
Pre-independence . 20 October 1986,
Guşgy, 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. 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 (Khivan) 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
Chagatai 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, Ýomut, 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, Turkmenistan'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 1991, 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, Turkmenistan's communist leader
Saparmyrat Nyýazow 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. ==Politics==