Transcaspian Oblast

Transcaspia was conquered by Russia in 1879–1885, in a series of campaigns led by Generals Lomakin, Skobelev, and Annenkov. The construction of the Transcaspian Railway was started from the shores of the Caspian in 1879 in order to secure Russian control over the region and provide a rapid military route to the Afghan border. In 1885 a crisis was precipated by the Russian annexation of the Panjdeh oasis, to the south of Merv, which nearly led to war with Britain, as it was thought that the Russians were planning to march on to Herat in Afghanistan.[2] Until 1898 Transcaspia was part of the Governor-Generalship of Caucasus administered from Tiflis, but in that year it was made an oblast (province) of Russian Turkestan governed from Tashkent. The best known Military Governor to have ruled the region from Ashkhabad was probably General Kuropatkin, whose authoritarian methods and personal style of governance made the province very difficult for his successors to control. Consequently, the administration of Transcaspia became a byword for corruption and brutality within Russian Turkestan, as Russian administrators turned their districts into petty fiefdoms and extorted money from the local population.[3] These abuses were fully exposed by the Pahlen Report of 1908-10.

During the revolutionary period of 1917-19 parts of Transcaspia were briefly occupied by British Indian forces from Meshed. The oblast was one of the last centres of Basmachi resistance to Bolshevik rule, with the last of the rebellious Turkmen fleeing across the border to Afghanistan and Iran in 1922-23.

As of 1897, 382,487 people populated the oblast. Turkmens constituted the majority of the population. Significant minorities consisted of Kazakhs and Russians. Total Turkic speaking were 328,059 (85,8%).

• Kropotkin, Peter; Bealby, John Thomas (1911). "Transcaspian Region" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 170–172.