A Breakaway Republic—rule by “dreams, insights, mythologies”

August 15 | 2022

In summer 2013, almost a decade ago, when George Clooney finished it with Stacey Keibler and Edward Snowden announced himself as the leaker of NSA documents, I travelled to Lithuania. I didn’t know at the time that the Baltic country—and the Suwalki Gap in particular—would become a focal point in a once-unimaginable conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The motivation for my travel, to explore my extensive family past in Lithuania, was entirely personal. 

Throughout my weeks in Lithuania, I was to become engrossed in many facets of the country beyond my preconceived itinerary. Among the most memorable was my random encounter with the fanciful “Republic of Užupis” conceived by artists within a neighbourhood of Vilnius and, not least, its extraordinary Constitution. Drafted in 1998, the Constitution remains prescient nearly 25 years later. It expresses the accumulated wisdom of a community governed not only by customary law, but also by “inspirational examples, dreams, insights, mythologies.” 

The first article, “Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnele, and the River Vilnele has the right to flow by everyone,” anticipated the legal personhood of the Muteshekau Shipu (or Magpie River) in Québec, granted in 2021 and accompanied by nine rights. Article 35, “No one has the right to make another person guilty,” remains a useful precept in our era of polarization and widespread recriminations. Ditto for Article 4, “Everyone has the right to make mistakes.”

Not a few of the articles appeal for their playfulness: for instance, Article 8, “Everyone has the right to be undistinguished and unknown,” or Article 10, “Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat.” One of my favourite articles, number 27, strikes me as at once simple, ambiguous, and profound: “Everyone shall remember their name.”

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