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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Turkmenistan
Index
Beginning in the 1930s, Moscow kept the republic under firm control.
The nationalities policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
fostered the development of a Turkmen political elite and promoted
Russification. Slavs, both in Moscow and Turkmenistan, closely supervised
the national cadre of government officials and bureaucrats; generally, the
Turkmen leadership staunchly supported Soviet policies. Moscow initiated
nearly all political activity in the republic, and, except for a
corruption scandal in the mid-1980s, Turkmenistan remained a quiet Soviet
republic. Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (see
Glossary) and perestroika (see Glossary) did not have a
significant impact on Turkmenistan. The republic found itself rather
unprepared for the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence
that followed in 1991.
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. After the August 1991 coup attempt against the Gorbachev
regime in Moscow, Turkmenistan's communist leader Saparmyrat 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 had little choice other than to declare Turkmenistan's
independence from the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Republic
of Turkmenistan on October 27, 1991.
Data as of March 1996
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