russians in georgia first here's some statistics all the soviet censuses for georgia proper south ossetia and abkhazia it's in russian but you shouldn't have any difficulties with these tables russians are in russian just find appropriate columns georgia ethnic russians appeared in georgia in significant numbers after georgia became part of the russian empire in kartli and kakheti ajara there were and people who indicated russian as their mother language in tiflis governorate and kutais governorate respectively dukhobors have to be mentioned as well as you can see from the census data the russian population had risen from to the maximum of thousand between and and then began to decline slowly to thousand in migration and lower birth rates were the main reasons of this decline obviously many russians left georgia during the s due to economic hardships mainly imho and other reasons abkhazia