The SSR Abkhazia was an ethnically diverse region, whose demographics changed considerably in the decades after its annexation by Russia. Up to 100,000 Abkhaz had been deported in the late nineteenth century, mainly to the Ottoman Empire. By the time the SSR Abkhazia was formed, ethnic Abkhaz comprised less than 30 percent of the population. The "korenizatsiia" (nativization) policy implemented in this era, which was to promote minority groups within the USSR, saw the numbers of Abkhaz increase: between 1922 and 1926, ethnic Abkhaz grew by roughly 8%, while the number of ethnic Georgians dropped by 6%. Thus, according to the 1926 Soviet census, the only census conducted during the SSR's existence, the number of ethnic Abkhaz reached 55,918 or around 27.8% of the total population (which numbered 201,016), while the number of Georgians was around 67,494 (36%). Other major ethnic groups counted in the 1926 census were Armenians (25,677, or 12.7 percent), Greeks (14,045, or 7 percent), and Russians (12,553, or 6.2 percent).