Text on the top of the illustration - the races
Text under the illustration - at the mule races… at the mule races… go there, our mules!
The man illustrated in the caricature, Grigol Veshapeli, was a member of the Constituent Assembly of Georgia, a national legislature of the Democratic Republic of Georgia which was elected in February 1919 to ratify the Act of Independence of Georgia and enact the Constitution of 1921. The assembly remained active until the Soviet Russian military intervention brought Georgia’s three-year independence to an end in March 1921, forcing the members of the assembly to flee to Europe.
Despite this, in 1924 Veshapeli confronted the rest of the members and called upon Georgian emigrants to return to their homeland, giving them hope that the bolshevik administration would not proceed with the punishment.
According to the article, however, the assembly jumped on their mules and tamped european streets without taking into account the nature of the mule itself - it walks and walks, but it can unexpectedly stop and go back from where it started. Apparently, this is what happened to Veshapeli and his mule.
Resources:
Constituent Assembly of Georgia
Source: The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
