Adigeni

Adigeni Municipality, covering 799.5 square kilometers, comprises 55 villages alongside the boroughs of Adigeni and Abastumani. The municipality represents a demographic vacuum that was violently created and subsequently refilled. In November 1944, under Stalinist policy, the Meskhetian Turks—who previously constituted roughly 75% of Adigeni's population (32,923 out of 41,314 inhabitants)—were deported en masse to Soviet Central Asian republics. Following this ethnic cleansing, the villages were repopulated by ethnic Georgians transported from western regions such as Imereti and Racha. Villages such as Zarzma and Didi Zanavi serve as anchors of medieval Georgian heritage, possessing formidable fortresses (like Okros Tsikhe) and monastic complexes that reflect the region's historical role as a heavily fortified southern frontier against the Ottoman Empire.