thumb|1921 propaganda image encouraging women to join the [[Komsomol; a Turkic woman waves a flag with legend "I am free now too."]]
The Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR; ; ), originally called the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic, was an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic located in Soviet Central Asia which existed between 1918 and 1924. Uzbeks were the preeminent nation of the Turkestan ASSR. Tashkent was the capital and largest city in the region.
Name
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Date
!bgcolor=#dddddd|Name
|-----
| 30 April 1918 || Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic (constitution adopted 15 October 1918)
|-----
| 24 September 1920 || Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (constitution approved 24 September 1920)
|-----
| 30 December 1922 || Turkestan A.S.S.R. (within Russian S.F.S.R., part of Soviet Union)
|-----
|}
History
During the Russian Empire, the Turkestan ASSR's territory was governed as Turkestan Krai, the Emirate of Bukhara, and the Khanate of Khiva. From 1905, Pan-Turkist ideologues like Ismail Gasprinski aimed to suppress differences among the peoples who spoke Turkic languages, uniting them into one government.
This idea was supported by Vladimir Lenin, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks in Tashkent created the Turkestan ASSR. But in February 1918, the Islamic Council () and the Council of Intelligentsia (Uzb. Shoʻro-i Ulamo) met in Kokand city and declared a rival Turkestan Autonomous Republic, battling Bolshevik forces until the 1920s as part of the conservative Basmachi rebellion. However, its sphere of influence at this time was limited to only a few railway junctions.
In the late 1917, the TSFR was cut off from the RSFSR by the revolt of the Orenburg Cossacks, but held out, despite being surrounded by hostile states, until the arrival of the Red Army in September 1919 after the Eastern Front Counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, a power struggle among the Communists ensued between those favoring a Pan-Turkist government like Turar Ryskulov and Tursun Khojaev, and those in favor of dividing Soviet Turkestan into smaller ethnic or regional units, such as Fayzulla Xoʻjayev and Akmal Ikramov. The latter group won, as national delimitation in Central Asia began in 1924.