Home and Home Again

This memoir, published in 1973, is set in Georgia in 1961. The author, having fled the fledgling Soviet Union for Turkey and later entered the United States in 1922, returns to his homeland four decades later with his American wife and resumes his relationships with his family and friends. He summarises his story to a curious member of the public:
“How could you leave home and go so far away?”
“I wanted to learn all about automobiles and how they were designed and made.”
“You were a student?”
"No. It was 1918. I was a soldier tired of war.”
The nostalgic visit to his native country only became possible due to the post-Stalin thaw introduced by Nikita Khruschev.

The author, George Papashvily (born 23 August 1898), was brought up in the village of Kobiaantkari about 50 km northeast of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. There was considerable doubt about his year of birth. In the 1940 census he's declared to be 51 years old and in the 1942 draft registration for men born between 1897 and 1921, he claims that he “does not know“ his age. This memoir, however, records that he was drafted into the army soon after the conscription age was lowered — and from this it can be interpreted that he probably turned 18 in 1916. He served as a sniper in the Russian infantry, some of the time on the Turkish front, and subsequently fought with the Georgian army during the revolution of 1917. On arriving in America, he worked in a variety of trades. In 1935 he and his American wife Helen (née Waite, born 24 December 1906) moved to Pennsylvania and established a farm. She helped him to write his first memoir — Anything Can Happen, published in 1945, was a lively account of his experiences as an immigrant and was well received (later being adapted into a 1952 film). They went on to write several other books together. He also became highly regarded as a sculptor.

The remoteness of rural Georgia is epitomised in the author's recollection of the local response to the outbreak of the First World War:
“Why is everybody in such a hurry?"
“Some kind of an archduke was killed.”
“Where?”
“Who knows. Far away someplace.”
“Why was he killed?”
“Who knows.”
“There must have been a reason.”
“You don't need a reason to kill an archduke.”
“But what has that to do with all the extra work brought in the shop to be finished at once?”
“The officers hope to make a war out of the dead archduke.”
“Why a war?”
“Why? To earn promotions, naturally, and medals and estates and prizes.”
“It doesn't make any sense.”
“Of course not...”