Self-styled Macedonian ‘Republic’ Is Letting Freedom Ring

Their village is just a dot on the map, but the people here consider it a country all its own: a self-proclaimed Balkan state that’s been defying authority for more than a decade.

There’s a lot of whimsy in applying the term “republic” to Vevcani, a mountain hamlet tucked into the southwestern corner of Macedonia just over the border from Albania.

But nationhood of sorts is a state of mind for the 2,500 villagers, who say their independent spirit helped them preserve the peace when much of the rest of the Balkans disintegrated into bloody warfare in the 1990s.

“We may seem radical in our ways, but we were determined not to let anyone manipulate us,” villager Nenad Batkovski said over coffee in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, where he is Vevcani’s self-styled consul.

When the former Yugoslavia began breaking up in 1991, the village held a referendum and 99% of the voters backed the creation of the “Republic of Vevcani.” The menfolk reportedly stashed guns and ammunition, muttering warnings that they were to be left alone--or else.

Macedonia, freshly independent from the former six-state Yugoslav federation, ignored the strange village. Ten years later, outsiders still don’t know quite what to make of Vevcani.

“They must be a bit touched in the head up in that village,” said Vlade Nikolovski, a law student from the nearby town of Struga. “But they haven’t harmed anyone, and if they want to do things their own way, why not?”

The village flaunts mock attributes of its “independence.”

It has a republican coat of arms--two harlequins dancing over a magic caldron. It also issues red Vevcani passports and prints a currency, the licnik, to hand out as a souvenir. But villagers don’t use the bills as legal tender, imprinting them with the word “specimen” to avoid breaking Macedonia’s currency laws.

Every Jan. 14, on St. Vasilij Day, outsiders flock to Vevcani for its greatest treat--the village carnival, a 1,300-year tradition with pagan roots. As wacky as its hosts, the fete’s highlight is political satire, with masked villagers acting out current events.

Vevcani first aroused attention in 1987, when communist authorities wanted to pipe water from the village’s springs to Struga.

When villagers set up barricades, the government sent special police to beat them, including women and children. Despite the clubbings, the rebellion dragged on for weeks until the authorities finally backed off.

“They branded us as traitors to hide their own failure,” said Mayor Vasil Radinovski, adding that the obstinacy of the village’s Christian Slavs commanded respect even from surrounding Slavic Muslim and ethnic Albanian villages.

“We launched a cultural revolution,” Radinovski said. “Our Muslim neighbors come in peace, to trade and sample our springs’ healing waters.”

Throughout the bitter fighting earlier this year between Macedonian government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for greater rights for their minority, there was no trouble between Vevcani and the neighboring ethnic Albanian villages.

That in itself is remarkable: Vevcani is a Christian village surrounded by Muslim neighbors, often a recipe for disaster in the ethnically tense Balkans.

Instead, Vevcani thrives.

Its steep cobblestone streets and neat, tightly packed houses--from ancient red-brick tile buildings to brightly painted Western-style houses--are a stark contrast to the impoverished villages that dot so much of Macedonia.

Nada Kocovska, a 35-year-old mother of two, married a man from Vevcani 14 years ago. She says she never regretted coming from the outside because the “people are hard-working and determined to stay.”

Like his father before him and the rest of the village men, Ivica Sekurkovski, 38, will teach his sons the compulsory craft--masonry. It has made Vevcani men valued seasonal workers in places as far-flung as Belgium and contributed to the village’s prosperous economy.

“They can be what they want once they grow up, but to mix cement and build a good facade, this my sons must know,” Sekurkovski said.