Abkhazians

From Freepedia

Abkhazians — a caucasian ethnic group, which mainly live in Abkhazia, and which is distinct from Georgians. On the language and the culture they relate to the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus and they are some of the oldest the inhabitants of West Transcaucasia.

History

In the early middle ages Abkhazian Kingdom there existed in at one time with the Georgian Kingdom. In 1860-th years Abkhaziya was included into the Russian Empire. During this period and soon after that time a significant the part of the Abkhazian population (which confesses the mixture of Islamic, Christian and heathen beliefs) was either evicted or freely moved into adjacent Turkey.

Despite this emigration, at the beginning of the twentieth century Abkhazians still composed the majority on their native land. After the 1917 revolution Abkhaziya entered into the Soviet Union as a sovereign republic in the composition of what was called Transcaucasian Federation, and this status was confirmed in 1925 to year in the newly taken constitution of Abkhaziya. But in 1931 this status was lowered to the Autonomous Republic inside Georgia.

During the Soviet period (especially under Stalin) Abkhaziya underwent massive "Georgification": Abkhazians underwent discrimination in many spheres. L. Beria, the head of the Georgian Communist Party in 1930- yr. played very active role in implementing this policy. As a result the persentage of Abkhazians sharply changed during the life of two generations. By 1989 the number of Abkhazians was about 93.000 (18 percent of the population of republic), while Georgian population was counted by 240.000 (45 percent). Number of Armenians (15 percent of entire population) and Russians (14 percent) also substantially grew.

In 1993, the majority of the ethnic Georgian population was expeled from Abkhazia, so after this year, Abkhazians form relative ethnic majority in Abhazia (45%), with Russians, Armenians, Georgians, Greeks, and Jews comprising most of the remainder of the population of Abkhazia. There are about 200,000 ethnic Abkhazians total, of which 135,000 live in Abkhazia. Total population of Abkhazia is 300,000 people.