Turkmenistan has not been able to benefit greatly from this natural resource. As of the early twenty-first century, Turkmenistan is listed as having 150 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is one of the top ten deposits in the world. However, a lack of firm agreements with energy companies has resulted in much of this remaining unexplored.
The estimated 2002 gross national product (GDP) of the country was $21.5 billion, resulting in an estimated purchasing power parity (PPP) of $4,480 per capita. However, real per capita income was closer to $1,000 with most living on less than
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
$200 per annum. An artificial exchange rate, vast corruption, and the concentration of wealth at the top level all have created conditions of abject poverty for the majority of Turkmen. Trade remains limited to countries such as Russia and Ukraine, the latter of which uses barter deals to finance Turkmen gas imports. There are also modest trade relations with neighboring Iran, capitalizing on a rail link that crosses the Turkmen-Iranian border.
Because Turkmenistan neighbors Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to the north, and Afghanistan and Iran to the south, these four states, plus Russia, play a decisive role in Turkmen foreign policy. However, tempering any effort at expanding relations is the current Turkmen foreign policy of “positive neutrality,” which was declared in December 1995. According to this concept, Turkmenistan is not to be part of regional alliances and security arrangements. Thus, while it is technically part of the NATO Partnership for Peace program and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Turkmenistan rarely participates in conferences and meetings and never participates in joint security exercises. The magnitude of internal problems, though, may eventually compel the Turkmen government to more actively engage with outside states, particularly if it ever hopes to benefit from the energy reserves that have been underutilized. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allworth, Edward, ed. (1994). Central Asia: 130 Years of Russia Dominance, A Historical Overview. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bennigsen, Alexandre and Wimbush, S. Enders. (1985). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. London: C. Hurst. Capisani, Giampaolo R. (2000). The Handbook of Central Asia: A Comprehensive Survey of the New Republics. New York, I. B. Tauris. Cummings, Sally, ed. (2002). Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge. Kangas, Roger. (2002). “Memories of the Past: Politics in Turkmenistan.” Analysis of Current Events 14 (4): 16-19. Niyazov, Saparmurat. (1994). Unity, Peace, Consensus, 2 vols. New York: Noy Publishers. Niyazov, Saparmurat. (2002). Rukhnama. Ashbagat, Turkmenistan: Government of Turkmenistan.
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Ochs, Michael. (1997). “Turkmenistan: The Quest for Stability and Control.” In Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus, ed. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
(1815-1892), Russian journalist, writer, critic, and author of children’s books.
Born Elizaveta Vasilievna Sukhovo-Kobylina, Tur was a well-known salon hostess, prose writer, journalist, critic, and author of children’s fiction. The sister of the playwright Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin and the artist Sofia Sukhovo-Kobylina, she was the first woman to win a gold medal from the Imperial Academy of Arts. Her son, Yevgeny Salias, became a popular author of historical fiction.
Tur began her career in Russian letters as a translator and proofreader for Teleskop (Telescope), a prominent journal in the 1830s. She was romantically involved with its editor, and her tutor, Nikolai Nadezhdin, but her family forbade the match because they did not want her to marry a seminarian. In 1837 she reluctantly married Count Andrei Salias de Tournemire, a French citizen. After spending her dowry, Salias was exiled to France in 1844 for fighting a duel. Tur became a writer, in part, to support their three children. She was one of the first women in Russia to earn a living by writing.
Tur’s salon in Moscow included some of the most important intellectuals of the day: the authors Konstantin Leontiev and Ivan Turgenev, the poet Nikolai Ogarev, the historians Timofei Gra-novsky and Peter Kudriavtsev, and the journalist Mikhail Katkov. Salons were fruitful ground for cultural production, and Tur’s was no exception. Her first published fiction was a novella, Oshibka (A Mistake) in 1849. She then published several novellas and novels, the most famous of which is Antonina (1851). These stories had a large readership. They were published in the most widely circulated journals of the day (Otechestvennye zapiski, Russkii vestnik, and Sovremennik), as well as in separate editions, and her works were reviewed by such luminaries as Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
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Tur edited the fiction section of Katkov’s Russky vestnik from 1856 to 1860 and then published and edited a journal, Russkaya rech (Russian Speech), in 1861. The journal’s subtitle indicates its scope: “A Review of Literature, History, Art, and Civic Life in the West and in Russia.” Tur stopped publication in 1862 and, to avoid investigation by the Third Section, moved to Paris, where she lived for ten years and again hosted a salon. In these years she worked closely with Alexander Herzen; she also published a regular column, “Paris Review,” in Andrei Kraevsky’s newspaper Golos (The Voice). As a critic, Tur’s intellectual range was broad-she wrote articles on Jules Michelet, George Sand, Mme. de Recamier, Charlotte Bront?, and Elizabeth Fry, as well as Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. Each of her essays is a rich engagement with aesthetic and social issues.
In her fiction, criticism, and journalism Tur addressed the “woman question,” one of the foremost social issues of the day. In her fiction she often reversed common cultural stereotypes about women (such as making the unmarried woman the arbiter of moral goodness in Oshibka and creating a superfluous man who is not noble in Antonina). In her journal Tur often published fiction by women writers. In her criticism she addressed the issue of the position of women in society, both through ironic, incisive assessments of Michelet, Proudhon, and others and in a debate with the educator Natalia Grot.
In 1866 Tur began writing exclusively for children. These works were extraordinarily well received and went into many editions. Tur’s children’s fiction, too, became an important cultural influence, mentioned as formative by Zinaida Gippius, Marina Tsvetaeva, and others. See also: JOURNALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Costlow, Jane. (1991). “Speaking the Sorrow of Women: Turgenev’s ‘Neschastnaia’ and Evgeniia Tur’s ‘Antonina.’” Slavic Review 50 (2): 328-35. Gheith, Jehanne. (2003). Finding the Middle Ground: Krestovskii, Tur, and the Power of Ambivalence in Nineteenth-Century Russian Women’s Prose. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Gheith, Jehanne. (1996 ). “The Superfluous Man and the Necessary Woman: A ‘Re-vision’.” Russian Review 55 (2): 226-44.
The Tuva Republic in southern Siberia is one of the twenty-one nationality-based republics within the Russian Federation that was recognized in the Russian constitution of 1993. Previously called the Tuva Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), the constitution recognized it as Tyva, the regional form of the name. With an area of 65,810 square miles (170,448 square miles), Tuva lies northwest of Mongolia and directly east of Gorno-Altai. Tuva’s capital is Kizyl, and its other key cities are Turan, Chadan, and Shagonar. Drained by the headstreams of the Yenisey River, the western part of Tuva lies in a mountain basin, walled off by the Sayan and Tannu Olga ranges, which rise to 10,000 feet. The eastern portion is dominated by a wooded plateau. The climate is extreme, with summer temperatures reaching 43? C (110? F) and winter temperatures dropping to -61?C (-78?F). However, the region’s three hundred sunny, arid days per year help the people withstand the summers and winters. Tuva is inhabited by a majority of Tuvinians (more than 64%); the remainder are primarily ethnic Russians (32%). More than 200,000 Tuvinians live in the Russian Federation, and smaller communities live in Mongolia and China. The
