sentences:  As the only "treaty republic" in the USSR, the exact status of the SSR Abkhazia concerned the Soviet and Georgian authorities, which did not want other regions to demand a similar status.To resolve this it was decided to downgrade Abkhazia, and on 19 February 1931 it was re-formed as the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, subservient to the Georgian SSR while remaining a member of the TSFSR.The move was met with public protests, the first large-scale protests in Abkhazia against the Soviet authorities.