On November 1st 2024, a train station canopy collapsed in the city of
Novi Sad in north Serbia. It killed 16 people, including two children.This was widely seen in Serbia as a sign of the corruption of the
authoritarian right regime led by President Aleksandar Vucic. The canopy
collapsed after an outsourced Chinese contractor was given the job of
renovating the station. Many believe that government officials and
bureaucrats have been taking funds to be used for infrastructure
renovations , and then passing on work to cheap outsourced Chinese
contractors.
This kicked off a protest movement based on anti-corruption that is
continuing today. On 22nd November students in the Faculty of Dramatic
Arts joined the movement, blocking a street for a silent demonstration
lasting 15 minutes. Football hooligans in the pay of Vucic attacked
and beat students.
The students were not deterred and three days later went out on strike
and blockaded and occupied the faculty. By December 2nd, the blockades
had spread to the Faculty of Philosophy, Faculty of Philology, Faculty
of Chemistry, along with other faculties, and the University of Belgrade
Rectorate were also blockaded. The students demanded that all documents
related to the renovation at Novi Sad be released.
Vucic started as an ultra-nationalist and now taken up populist
positions. His Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came out of a 2008 split
in the fascist Serbian Radical Party(SRS). It is riddled with
nationalists and has links to various fascist groups. Vucic himself was
Minister of Information under President Slobodan Miloshevic.
The Vucic regime tries to maintain a balancing act between the EU on one
hand, and Russia and China on the other. Vucic signed contracts for
gas supply from Russia and harbours Russian broadcasters not allowed in
the EU. Meanwhile, 60% of foreign investment in Sebia comes from the EU,
and 60% of Serbian exports go to the EU. It blocks refugees reaching
the EU and supports war against Russia. The EU is keen to get its hands
on Serbia's lithium resources. It does not want to see an unstable
Serbia, worried that unrest could spread to other countries. Therefore,
it is not keen to pronounce on Serbia.
Demonstrations with as many as 500,000 have taken place against the
regime, the biggest one being in Belgrade on March 14th. This was the
largest demonstration in Serbian history. In response, Vucic has
increasingly used the police as well as fascist gangs of hooligans to
attack the movement. In August , demonstrators in the towns of Vrbas and
Backa were attacked by these hooligans, with the compliance of the
police. This continued at demonstrations on the following day. In Novi
Sad masked thugs attacked demonstrators with bottles, clubs, fireworks,
and flares. Street battles followed , and an SNS office was burnt down.
Vucic has also expanded the security unit, the JZO, from 300 to 1,300.
It is directly responsible to him, and acts to intimidate protestors. He
has threatened them with death, and compared them to fascists and Nazis,
saying that they were paid by either Germany or Britain.
Various Serbian left formations have tried to keep the protests
apolitical, trying to stop it taking on an anticapitalist outlook.
The movement remains organised in a federative and horizontal way. As
one student, Veljko Radic, said, in an interview with Transnational
Social Strike: "What makes these protests so special for me is the fact
that students are organised horizontally. Every faculty has a local
plenum where anyone can say whatever they want, then there would be a
short discussion and voting. Most often, it ends up almost reaching a
consensus. Furthermore, every faculty has a lot of working groups for
strategy, donations, media, communication with other faculties,
security, activities during the blockade etc. Every decision made at
local plenums is sent to a big delegate meeting where every faculty has
a delegate who shares what has been decided at their local plenum. In
that way, decisions concerning the whole university are made. Also, any
kind of collaboration with political parties and NGOs is forbidden."
The government has made no meaningful concessions, despite the amplitude
of the movement. A one day general strike, involving hundreds of
thousands, shut down all the major cities, with farmers and their
tractors joining the blockades in Belgrade. Workers and students
continued the actions s for several days after this. Six days after the
strike, the Prime Minister, Milos Vucevic, leader of the SNS, resigned.
However, this did not appease the movement.
During a massive demonstration, police used a sound cannon emitting high
pitched noises to cause a stampede. Despite all of this, the movement
remains strong. The horizontal, "direct democracy" employed by the
students has spilled out into the working class, into many of the
Serbian cities. As one anarchist with the pseudonym Random noted, "I was
part of an assembly organized for several blocks[of flats]together.
People immediately agreed on direct democracy. Almost all the people who
support this protest, and there are a lot of them, are also looking at
this plenum, direct democracy, assembly, this way of organising, they're
looking at it with love in their eyes, truly. And this is a big
potential for the anarchist movement.[...]"Anarchistic
organizing[is]actually[...]one of the biggest reasons this[movement]is
so successful now. Because[the]students don't have any leaders. It's
crucially forbidden. I mean, it's radically forbidden for them to have
leaders among themselves.[...]All this spilled from[the]faculties
to[the]people..."
Similarly, the establishment political parties have so far been unable
to co-opt the movement. Another anarchist, Ilik, stated: "They[the
opposition parties]tried to co-opt[the protests]by having their people
infiltrate the blockades at schools. ... They have multiple "student
organisations" or youth organisations. Some of them are pretending not
to be aligned with opposition[parties]. Some of them are openly aligned
with opposition[parties]. But all of them are advocating for the same
thing that the opposition says: working with those parties. ... So they
tried to co-opt it, they're still trying to co-opt it, but it's not
really working out.
"This is now a social movement that first started as a student movement
and then grew. Workers started helping, farmers joined in, average
people started just being part of the movement, and now it's a big
social movement that the opposition doesn't really have power over.
They're trying to use it, of course, they're trying to be a peaceful
solution, where it's going to be a transitional government, or there's
going to be an election, which they want to win because they are the
only other party option. ... But they are not popular, and the more they
try to push for elections and transitional government, anything that
puts them into power, the more people are organising by themselves."[18]
It remains to be seen whether the movement can withstand the repression.
Anyway, the example of Serbia needs to be more widely known. Along with
the movements in Indonesia, Nepal, France, Macedonia and elsewhere, we
are seeing the phenomenon of horizontal organisation emerging, that has
nothing to do with Leninist dogma, and which offers glimpses of a new
society, of the evolution of the human race to a higher level, that of
anarchist communism. In these grim times, this phenomenon needs to be
broadcast and celebrated. These heroic movements are lighthouses in the
human night.
The following article is worth a read:
https://medium.com/orobo-journal/representative-democracy-is-failing-serbias-horizontal-student-revolution-part-1-3ba7ed01e748
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2025/09/16/the-unrest-in-serbia/
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