Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan A Central Asian territory which came under the sovereignty of the Russian Empire in the 1880s. An uprising against the Tsarist regime in 1916 was followed by bitter fighting in the Russian Civil War, so that a Communist regime was not established until 1920. It became part of the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic in 1921, and a separate Soviet Republic in 1924, formally joining the USSR in 1925. In response to Stalin's policy of the collectivization of agriculture, the majority of the country's nomadic tribes became settled. Despite the existence of considerable mineral resources, it acquired little industry. Its population was the poorest educated in the Soviet Union, and productivity was extremely low even by Soviet standards. The population's misery was compounded by the party leadership's corruption. Thus, to maintain even a minimal standard of living, the Soviet Union subsidized the state budget by two-thirds. This, and the existence of only a small educated elite which was mostly Russian, led to very hesitant calls for independence when the Soviet Union collapsed. In early 1991, more than 90 per cent of the entire electorate voted to retain a union with Russia.

Once independence had become inevitable after the August coup, close links with Russia were nevertheless maintained, as the latter financed, for example, its armed forces. Its politics remained deeply corrupt, as President Saparmurad Nyasov, who was already strengthened by the absence of any political opposition, attempted to bolster his reputation even further by emphasizing his position as ‘God's representative’ in Turkmenistan. Elections, too, continued to follow the traditional Soviet pattern: in the 1995 general elections, all 49 official (ex-Communist) candidates endorsed by Nyasov won without opposition, with an average of 99 per cent of the popular vote. In 1999, parliament passed a constitutional amendment declaring Nyasov President for life. In the general elections of that year, Nyasov's Democratic Party of Turkmenistan once again won every parliamentary seat.