[2] Armenians settled in Abkhazia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are now the largest ethnic group in Sukhumi, Gulripshi and Gagra Districts forming 20% of the Abkhazian population with approximately 42,000 out of a total of 242,862.
The earliest reliable records for Abkhazia are the Family Lists compiled in 1886 (published 1893 in Tbilisi), according to which the Sukhum District's population was 69,000 of which 28,000 were Abkhaz.
[10] The Russian, Armenian and Georgian population grew faster than Abkhaz, due to the large-scale migration enforced especially during the rule of Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria.
At the same time, the Abkhaz authorities have been accused by local Armenian NGOs of intentionally decreasing the number of Abkhazian-Armenians.
[4] However, Armenians are under-represented in the Assembly as the number of the parliamentarians of this ethnicity is less than their share in the republic population.