A Century of Engineered Demography
The Abkhazians did not become a minority in Abkhazia. They were made one.
The absolute numbers
Population by nationality across the eight canonical counts. Census years carry dot markers; the lines between them are visual guides only, and no data exists between censuses. Estonians were recorded in 1886 and 1897 only. Hover or tap any point for the exact figure and its source. The hollow dashed marker is a non-canonical 1922/23 figure.
The share of population
The same censuses as shares of the total population, for the Abkhaz and the Kartvelians only. The falling line and the rising line cross between 1897 and 1926.
Who were the Samurzaq’anoans?
The population of the Samurzaq’an district was recorded separately in 1886: bilingual, and contested ever since. The 1886 source’s own summary tables count them with the Abkhaz, giving 60,432 Abkhaz in Kutais Governorate. Later counts reassigned them to ‘Georgians’. A fuller account at AbkhazWorld. The toggle below recomputes the 1886 figures in the hero panel and both charts under each reading.
Even on the reading least favourable to the Abkhaz, the Kartvelian majority of 1989 did not exist in 1886 outside one border district.
The mechanisms
The change plotted above was not drift. Seven documented interventions, in order.
The record, on film and on paper
None of this was hidden. Travellers described the emptied country, foreign ministries wrote it down, and the resettlement programme was filmed, reported to government and celebrated in official speeches. The accounts, footage and documents below are contemporary.
‘What is to be the future of this Earthly Paradise? Its ancient and primaeval inhabitants are gone. They have been exiled for a quarter of a century; their dwellings and their tombs are alike lost in the glorious vegetation … A people that had lived the same life in the same place since the beginning of history has been dispersed or destroyed.’
‘Despite that mixture of nations, there is a nation in Abkhasia that may and must be considered as the owners of the land. That nation is the Abkhasian one. No matter how far we peep into history, we shall always meet on the Abkhasian territory, the Aborigines of the land of the Abkhasians. Other nations come later … and, without a doubt, are newcomers for the Abkhasians.’
‘On the initiative of Comrade L. P. Beria, beloved son of the Georgian people, thousands of peasant farmers are being resettled from districts in Georgia where land is in short supply to Abkhazia … Eleven new kolkhozes have been organised [on the basis of] 1650 households resettled from the overcrowded districts of the Georgian SSR, and by the end of 1944 the number of resettled farming households will reach 5404.’
‘The development begun in 1937 … under the direct leadership of Comrade L. P. Beria of fertile lands in Abkhazia that had lain uncultivated for centuries by means of the resettlement of kolkhoz workers from districts of Georgia where land is in short supply should be regarded as one of the major achievements of Soviet power in Abkhazia.’
‘In 1937, the head of the Georgian Communist Party, Lavrenti Beria undertook his “anti-Abkhazian drive”, involving the forced immigration of thousands of non-Abkhazians (especially Mingrelians) into Abkhazia … The Abkhaz alphabet was changed to a Georgian base. During 1944–45 all Abkhazian schools were closed, replacing them with Georgian schools, and the Abkhaz language was banned from administration and publication.’
What the categories hide
The 1926 census cross-tabulated nationality against mother tongue. Both directions of assimilation are visible in one table.
Figures before 1886 are estimates unworthy of the name and are excluded. This graphic uses only the canonical census record and states every classification choice openly. Readers are invited to check every figure.
- Daniel Müller, ‘Demography: ethno-demographic history, 1886–1989’, in George Hewitt (ed.), The Abkhazians: A Handbook, Curzon Press, 1998.
- Family Lists of 1886 (Svod statisticheskikh dannykh o naselenii Zakavkazskogo kraia, Tiflis, 1893); First All-General Census of 1897; All-Union Censuses of 1926, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, 1989; Great Soviet Encyclopædia, 1st ed., vol. I, 1926.
- AbkhazWorld: ‘The Ethno-Demographic Aspect’; ‘Demographic Change in Abkhazia’; Georgii Tsereteli, 1879; Jakob Gogebashvili, 1877; ‘On the Demographic Expansion of Abkhazia, 1937–mid-1950s’; ‘The Samurzakanians (Myrzakans)’; ‘The Downgraded Republic: The Stalin-Beria Terror in Abkhazia, 1921–1953’; Douglas W. Freshfield, ‘The Solitude of Abkhazia’; Lord Curzon to General Officer in Command, 1919.