The article considers the activities of the Russian Administration in Abkhazia after the abolition of the principality and, in particular, on the eve of the Lychny uprising of 1866. The first chief of the Sukhumskii voennyi otdel (Sukhum Military Department), as Abkhazia came to be called, Major General P. N. Shatilov's policy in support of the Abkhazian nobility was recognized by the Caucasian Administration as incorrect, therefore he was displaced. The new chief of the Sukhum Department, V. M. Konyar, suggested that the land had to be considered the property of the State, which could dispose of it entirely at its own discretion, and asserted that no one in Abkhazia could be recognized as a landowner. Members of the Editing Commission for the peasant reform had denied the local nobility their claims to the peasants and their lands, but at the same time, they were extremely rude and arrogant to the peasants. Mistrust of the representatives of the new Administration to the Abkhazian population, including the nobility, reluctance to reckon with the peculiarities of the local way of life, arrogance and rudeness of officials became the reasons for massive public protest.