ABSTRACT
Skopje is the proud capital of the Republic, the icon of Socialist resurrection after the devastating earthquake of 1963 a phoenix rising from the ashes. In the aftermath of the earthquake, young people from the countryside flocked to Skopie to help build the socialist dream. In the urban centre of Skopje, the village is going through a revival. It is the village that directs the modernity of Skopje in architecture, monuments, political discourse, economic support and, last but not least, as a hub for a newly forged identity, which one could call the new rural-urbanity'. Macedonian peasant society' describes the Balkan identity of the inhabitants of Skopje and is especially expressed through the revival of Christian Orthodoxy, which gives Slavic Macedonians a claim to their country. Skopje itself demarcates the local and the global. In the Balkans, it is presented as rooted, timeless and peasant-like; its European identity is mobile, contemporary and post-modern.
