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A few years ago I met a Baha'i originally from Siberia Sergei Poselski..He was a memebr of the third National Spiritual Assembly afte rthe collapse of the old Soviet Union..also Mr. Furutan's family had been in ashqabad and he had travelled around the country so I became interested in this area...

The following is an interesting history on the sublect:


Soviet period

By the time the effects of the October Revolution began to spread across the Russian Empire transforming it into the Soviet Union
, Bahá'ís had spread east through Central Asia and Caucasus, and also north into Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi and Kazan with the community of Ashgabat alone numbering about 3000 adults.

After the October Revolution the Ashgabat Bahá'í community was progressively severed from the rest of the worldwide Bahá'í community. Initially the religion still grew in organization when the election of the regional National Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the Caucasus and Turkistan in 1925.

However the Bahá'í House of Worship was expropriated by the Soviet authorities in 1928 and leased back to the Bahá'ís until 1938 when it was fully secularized by the communist government and turned into an art gallery.

However the records of events shows an increasing hostility to the Bahá'is between 1928 and 1938. From 1928 free rent was set for 5 years and the Bahá'ís were asked to make certain repairs which they did. But in 1933 before the 5 year rent agreement was expired the government suddenly decided expensive renovations would be required. These unexpected requirements were accomplished but in 1934 complaints about the condition of the building were again laid. However inquires from abroad silenced the complaints.

But in 1936 escalated demands of were made beyond the resources of the local community. However the Bahá'ís of Turkistan and the Caucasus rallied and were able to sustain the construction requested. Then the government made moves to confiscate the main gardens of the property to provide for a playground of a school (the school itself being confiscated from the Bahá'ís originally) which would wall off the grounds from the Bahá'ís leaving only and entrance to the temple through a side entrance rather than the main entrance facing the front of the property. Protests lead to the abandonment of this plan but then in 1938 all pretexts came to an end.

The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake seriously damaged the building and rendered it unsafe; the heavy rains of the following years weakened the structure, and it was demolished in 1963 and the site converted into a public park. With the Soviet ban on religion, the Bahá'ís, strictly adhering to their principle of obedience to legal government, abandoned its administration and its properties were nationalized.

By 1938, with the NKVD (Soviet secret police) and the policy of religious oppression most Bahá'ís were sent to prisons and camps or sent abroad; Bahá'í communities in 38 cities ceased to exist. In the case of Ashgabat Bahá'í sources indicate on February 5 the members of the assembly, leaders of the community and some general members of the community to a total of 500 people were arrested, homes were searched and all records and literature were confiscated claiming they were working for the advantage of foreigners and sometimes forced to dig their own graves as part of the interrogation. It is believed one woman set fire to her self and died later in a hospital. The women and children were largely exiled back to Iran. In 1953 Bahá'ís started to move to the Soviet Republics in Asia, after the head of the religion at the time, Shoghi Effendi, initiated a plan called the Ten Year Crusade.

The Bahá'ís who moved to Turkmenistan found some individual Bahá'ís still living there though the religion remained unorganized.

During the 1978-9 civil war in Afghanistan some Bahá'ís fled to Turkmenistan.

The first Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly in the Soviet Union was elected in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, when conditions permitted it in 1989; sixty-one Bahá'ís were listed as eligible for election. The Local Spiritual Assembly of Ashgabat was officially registered by the city council of Ashgabat on 31 January 1990. Through the rest of 1990 several Local Spiritual Assemblies formed across the Soviet Union including Moscow, Ulan-Ude, Kazan, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Leningrad and Murmansk

In September 1990 twenty-six Baha'is gathered together for the election of the first Local Spiritual Assembly of Merv.

By September 1991, there were some eight hundred known Baha'is and twenty-three Local Spiritual Assemblies across the dissolving Soviet Union, while in Turkmenistan there were about 125 Bahá'ís with two Local Assemblies and two groups (in Balakhanih and Bayranali). When the National Spiritual Assembly of the Soviet Union was dissolved 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 Ashgabat. Most of these countries went on to form their own National Spiritual Assembly, and their communities went on to flourish ....

Bahá'í Faith in Turkmenistan: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article