The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated some 6,400 Baháʼís in 2005.
In 1847 the Russian ambassador to Tehran, Prince Dimitri Ivanovich Dolgorukov, requested that the Báb, the herald to the Baháʼí Faith who was imprisoned at Maku, be moved elsewhere.
By the time of the October Revolution Baháʼís had spread through Central Asia and Caucasus with the community in Ashgabat numbering about two thousand people.
After the October Revolution and the ban on religion, the Baháʼís (strictly adhering to their principle of obedience to legal government) abandoned their administration and allowed their properties to be nationalized.
Baháʼís had managed to re-enter various countries of the Eastern Bloc throughout the 1950s,[1] following a plan of the head of the religion at the time, Shoghi Effendi.
[1] In 1992, a regional National Spiritual Assembly for the whole of Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) was formed with its seat in Ashkhabad.
In 2002 Baháʼí Conference on Social and Economic Development for the Americas, held in Orlando, Florida had an attendee from Kazakhstan.
[14] A Kazakhstan citizen worked at the Baháʼí World Centre in Haifa and volunteered participation with the Inspirit troupe which toured Vilnius in 2004.