[2] In 1869 the Russian Empire established a foothold in present-day Turkmenistan with the foundation of the Caspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy).

[2] In 1881 the Russians under General Mikhail Skobelev besieged and captured Geok Tepe, one of the last Turkmen strongholds, northwest of Ashgabat.

[2] Following annexation to Russia, the area was administered as the Transcaspian Region by corrupt and malfeasant military officers and officials appointed by the Turkestan Governor-Generalship in Tashkent.

[3] However, the years immediately preceding the revolution had been marked by sporadic Turkmen uprisings against Russian rule, most prominently the anti-tsarist revolt of 1916 that swept through the whole of Turkestan.

[3] Efforts by the Soviet state to undermine the traditional Turkmen way of life resulted in significant changes in familial and political relationships, religious and cultural observances, and intellectual developments.

[5] 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.

[8] The nationalities policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) fostered the development of a Turkmen political elite and promoted Russification.

[6] From the 1930s onward, the nationality policy favoured use of the Turkmen language in areas of government "closest to the people": education, health, etc., paired with an acceptance that knowledge of the Russian language would be required for most government work as well as advancement in many careers: the government would no longer work to make knowledge of Russian superfluous to advancement and would cease active efforts to have Turkmen be the language of administration, and from 1938 onwards non-Russian students throughout the Soviet Union would be required to become fluent in Russian in order to advance through secondary and tertiary education.

[8] Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika did not have a significant impact on Turkmenistan, as many people there were self-dependent, and settlers of the territory and the Soviet Union's ministers rarely intertwined.

[8] When other constituent republics of the Soviet Union advanced claims to sovereignty in 1988 and 1989, Turkmenia'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.

The Soviet Space Programme had manufactured Proton, Mir and Soyuz rockets and crew bomber missiles during the Cold War.

Much of Turkmenistan infrastructure were built out during the Soviet period, such as new cities, institutions, buildings, roads, power stations, hospitals, schools, and factories.

The Supreme Soviet was a unicameral legislature of the republic headed by a chairman, with its superiority to both the executive and judicial branches and its members meet in Ashkhabad.