Editing Ashgabat (section)

====Impact of the 1948 earthquake====
[[File:Soviet Union stamp 1950 № 1493.jpg|thumb|Textile factory in Ashgabat depicted on a 1950 stamp]]
During the 1948 earthquake, since the bulk of Ashgabat at that time was built of either [[adobe]] or fired [[brick]], all but a very few buildings collapsed or were damaged beyond repair (the reinforced concrete grain elevator, [[St. Alexander Nevsky Church, Ashgabat|Church of St. Alexander Nevsky]], and [[Kärz Bank]] were among the structures that survived).<ref name=vosp>{{cite web|url=https://www.partner-inform.de/memoirs/detail/jetapy-zhiznennogo-puti-chast-6-g/4/620?lang=ru|title=ЭТАПЫ ЖИЗНЕННОГО ПУТИ, Часть 6. ТУРКМЕНИЯ|first=Михаил|last=Брегман|language=ru|publisher="Partner" MedienHaus GmbH & Co. KG}}</ref><ref name=karyyev>{{cite web|url=http://infoabad.com/vs-o-turkmenistane/-ashhabadskaja-katastrofa-glava-iz-knigi-b-karyeva-vot-prishlo-zemletrjasenie.html|title="Ашхабадская катастрофа". Глава из книги Б.Каррыева "Вот пришло землетрясение"|date=September 6, 2015|language=ru|publisher=Infoabad|access-date=July 26, 2020|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726231339/http://infoabad.com/vs-o-turkmenistane/-ashhabadskaja-katastrofa-glava-iz-knigi-b-karyeva-vot-prishlo-zemletrjasenie.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> According to Turkmenistan's official news agency,
: Nearly all one-story residential buildings in the city made of mud brick were destroyed, 95 percent of all one-story buildings made of fired brick, and the remaining structures were damaged beyond repair. The number of inhabitable buildings was in single digits, and at that, only after capital renovation.<ref name=quake />

A new general plan was hastily developed by July 1949. The city was divided into four zones: central, northern, eastern, and southwestern. Reconstruction of the city began in that year.<ref name=encyclopedia /><ref name=quake /> Thus from the early 1950s through 1991 Ashgabat's skyline was dominated by [[Brutalist architecture|the Brutalist Style]] favored by post-Stalin Soviet architects.<ref name=masterplan>{{cite web|url=http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/?id=5241|title=Столица, устремленная в будущее|first=Vladimir|last=Komarov|date=November 9, 2013|language=ru|work=Туркменистан: золотой век}}</ref> The city's central avenue, [[Magtymguly Avenue|Magtymguly]] (former Kuropatkin, Freedom, and Stalin Avenue), featured "monotonous and primarily two-story construction of administrative and residential buildings". This reconstruction "preserved the existing network of city streets as it was economically unjustified to redesign them".<ref name=quake /> The city was described as "...a Communist-era backwater, rebuilt into a typically drab provincial Soviet city..."<ref name=mt>{{cite web|url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2011/05/19/turkmen-leader-opens-gold-palace-a7060|title=Turkmen Leader Opens Gold Palace|date=May 19, 2011|publisher=Moscow Times}}</ref> The plan was updated in 1959.<ref name=bse>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://bse.slovaronline.com/2178-ASHHABAD |title=Большая советская энциклопедия |edition=1969-1978гг. – Издание III|place=Moscow |language=Russian |article=АШХАБАД}} (online edition)</ref>

Among the buildings erected in the 1950s and 1960s were the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Turkmenistan Communist Party, the Council of Ministers Building, the [[Mollanepes Academic Drama Theater]], the former [[Ashkhabad Hotel]] (now renamed Paytagt), the Academy of Sciences complex, and the downtown library building. On then-Karl Marx Square stood a monument to the Soviet "fighters for victory of Soviet power in Turkmenistan".<ref name=encyclopedia />