Reflections of the 1926 All-Union Population Census in Georgia

Abstract

A hundred years had elapsed since the first All-Union General Population Census had been carried out in the USSR. It encompassed all Union republics, including the Georgian SSR (then a part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). Georgia’s territory in 1926 was the same as that of the modern independent state, including the occupied territories currently outside the administration of the central government in Tbilisi. The 1926 Census was by far the most detailed in comparison with the Soviet Censuses carried out in 1937, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989. The published materials of the 1926 Census provide full information on sex ratio, ethnic and subethnic division, education, etc., down to the level of uezds and rural communities. No materials in 1926 were considered to be confidential in contrast with all the following Soviet Censuses of Population. According to the situation on December 1, 1926, there were enumerated 2.644 million people in the Georgian SSR, the majority of whom (77.9%) being rural. Collectivization in the USSR was not yet carried out and peasants tilled their own land. Urbanization level was low: just 22.1% resided in urban centers, half of them in the capital city of Tbilisi. Ethnic structure of population was as follows: Georgians (1.788 million) made up 67.6%, Armenians – 11.6%, Ossetians – 4.3%, Russians – 3.6%, Turks (named "Azerbaijanis" since 1936) – 3.1% Greeks – 2.1%, Abkhazians – 2.1%, Jews (all subgroups) – 1.2%, etc. It ought to be mentioned that the 1926 Census of Population was the only one carried out in the USSR which enumerated subethnic groups of the Georgians according to different Kartvelian languages –Megruli, Svanuri, and Lazuri, which accounted for respectively 13.5%, 0.7%, and 0.01% of the total of the ethnic Georgians. The 1926 Survey considered Adjarians a subethnic group of the Georgians (4% of the total) according to their religious affiliation (Sunni Islam), which in those times still was the major factor of their identity, while their language was a sub-dialect of Georgian proper. Paradoxically, the 1926 All-Union Population Census, like the successive Soviet Censuses, ignored the religious identity of any other ethnic or subethnic group. E. g., the Jews were not considered a single religious group but several ethnicities ("народности" in Russian), such as Ashkenazi ("евреи" in Russian, literally “the Jews”), or according to their mother tongue (e. g., Georgian Jews), or according to the area of their origin (e. g., Central Asian, Crimean, Mountain Jews). The population of the Treaty Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia (that was the official name of the region until 1931) within the Georgian SSR was 203.6 thousand (including 15,012 foreign nationals) in 1926, of whom the ethnic Abkhazians made up 56,9 thousands (27.6% of the total population of the Republic). It ought to be mentioned that 15.5% of the Abkhazians (8.8 thousand), all of them residing in the Gali uezd (historical province of Samurzakano), reported their mother tongue to be Megrelian, a Kartvelian language. The ratio of the Georgians was 33.1%, most of them Megrelian-speakers. Comparisons are made of the 1926 Census data with that of 1989, carried out in the same area. During that period, the population of Georgia more than doubled (an increase by 218%) and reached 5.4 million. The number of population seems to be the largest in Georgia throughout its history. The ethnic composition also changed in comparison with that of 1926, with the ethnic Georgians ratio being 70% (no subethnic division had been recorded), followed by the Armenians (8.1%), the Russians 6.3%, and Azeris 5.7%. After 1991 the number of population decreased mostly due to emigration while its ethnic composition had undergone serious changes. The data of the 2024 Population Census of Georgia to be published later in 2026 will give a rare opportunity to compare the population of modern Georgia with that of a hundred years ago.