‘You can feel hope in the air’—inside the mass movement rocking Serbia

A blockade of a bridge in Novi Sad, Serbia (Picture: Mašina)

Almost 200 tonnes of concrete crushed 15 people in Novi Sad on 1 November when the canopy at the front of the railway station collapsed. It sparked a mass movement of tens of thousands of people across the small state in the Balkans, southern Europe.

From university campuses and high schools to the streets, people are organising against president Aleksandar Vucic’s regime.

The movement forced the resignation of prime minister Milos Vucevic earlier this month. He is a close ally of Vucic and was mayor of Novi Sad when building work began on the railway station.

But the movement is still rocking the whole regime as people turn out onto the streets.

SW: How did the railway station disaster in Novi Sad become such a symbol for people’s anger with the government of president Aleksandar Vucic?

Vucic has been in power effectively since 2012. Members of the ruling party and businessmen close to the regime have been taking away people’s homes and land, exploiting young girls and launching smear campaigns. All unpunished.

The country’s institutions and resources are being sacrificed to foreign corporations and domestic looters all in the name of “progress”.

Forests are being decimated. Rivers and the air are filled with poisonous industrial waste. Quarries and mines are popping up at people’s doorsteps. And historic monuments are “cleared out” to leave space for speculative property development.   

So even before the tragedy in Novi Sad, everybody’s cup was already filled with resentment at the government. The railway station disaster turned out to be the last drop.

We are witnessing a convergence of grievances. It is by far the largest and geographically most widespread protest movement since the fall of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

The current movement is not the first large-scale anti-government action since Vucic took power. It was preceded by a number of protest waves against violence, ecological destruction and other issues. Some of them won at least temporary concessions from the government.  

SW: What makes these protests different?

After decades of social degradation, we have this mass mobilisation in which people got encouraged and called for solidarity.

Although the protests are led by the students and they define the demands, many organise and are joining the movement.

Agricultural workers are coming with their tractors to help block the streets and to show support. Taxi drivers by the hundreds gave free rides to protesters from Novi Sad to Belgrade. Teachers strike and pharmacy and cultural workers protest.  

The comradery on the streets is spectacular. But the fulfilment of the demands of the movement will not solve the problems all these people from the different walks of life are facing.

SW: How do the students organise?

It’s been quite a surprise to older activists and people involved in politics to see how the young people in universities organised since late November. If anybody asked four months ago if this kind of organising was possible, the answer would have been no.  

But the students managed to create forms of democratic organising in every faculty and keep it alive. In every college that joined the protest, they have ongoing discussions about every question—from whether they should buy more soap for toilets to how to organise the next protest.

There are lots of new people involved. They have a deliberate strategy of not producing heroes and not producing leaders. They send different people to TV shows, and sometimes even wouldn’t give their names so as to avoid the press making heroes out of particular persons.

It makes it hard for the government who wants to make enemies and traitors out of opposition leaders. They know that the media tends to single out people and present them as leaders and they have been trying to avoid this.

SW: What sort of government is it?

It is basically authoritarian. It’s not a full-fledged dictatorship, but Vucic hugely oversteps the boundaries of his constitutional role and acts like the sole decision maker. 

They are different in a number of ways to the coalitions around the Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Serbia, which governed between 2000 and 2012. But there is a deep continuity of neoliberal policies  

SW: What is the official opposition and what’s its relationship to the streets?

The official opposition consists of many political parties and none of them enjoy significant support among voters. In terms of political ideology, most are probably center left and center right.

The public distrust in the opposition is widespread. This distrust is currently reflected in the stance of the student movement to refuse any kind of contact with opposition parties, NGOs and so on.

Many more people are on the streets than when the Milosevic regime fell in 2000. People keep breaking the records.

The opposition parties seem to respect the fact that they are not welcome on the streets and they keep themselves in the background.

The situation in Novi Sad is somewhat different. A few oppositional politicians are very active in the streets and have been arrested on several occasions during the current protests.

SW: How many people are involved and how is the movement organised?

Many more people are on the streets than when Milosevic fell in 2000. People keep breaking the records. We had 100,000 people on the streets of Belgrade in late December, 22,000 in Novi Sad and 15,000 in Nis.

There are protests in almost every single municipality in the country and action every day for the last two months. I would say that at least a quarter of a million people are involved, in a country of 6.5 million people.

It’s usually the students who call other people to get out into the streets. But it’s also local groups who are either involved or not in parliamentary politics, who are mostly recognised as activist groups. And in some places it’s been high school kids.

In many places the organisers are fresh faces. Somebody just posts something on Instagram and says, okay, let’s meet in front of the faculty at five on Thursday.

There’s also been one guy who came out on his own in a small town. He blocked the traffic in the street. And another guy 200 kilometres away went to help him. And now they are helped by 30 students from the local high school, and they have a full-fledged traffic block every day.

Iskra Krstić

SW: What is the politics of the student movement?

The students stated that they have disagreements between themselves on questions of political ideology. But they say that this is something that should be left aside until this fight is won.

They apply democratic practices, but they are probably on average more conservative than progressive.

This is not surprising because according to research some 75 percent of the overall Serbian population is quite conservative. But it’s kind of hard to say which part of their public statements resemble their values, and which part is designed to appeal to the general public.

For example, the students keep taking Serbian flags to the protest and saying that they are actually the ones who are patriotic for this country. This is done at least partly in answer to the president’s claims that the students are traitors and Ustashas—Croatian fascists.

Still, their demands remain in the framework of the demand for the rule of law. They want the culprits of the Novi Sad disaster to be apprehended and legally sanctioned. And they want all documentation belonging to the reconstruction of the railway station made public.

But they don’t go further to discuss the basis of the system that led to the disaster.

SW: What kind of social backgrounds do people come from?

The masses of people that take part in the protests day after day are from all classes of society. Some drive SUVs others toil with 30 year old tractors.

The student population is also mixed. Their future vocations suggest that they’ll belong to the middle class, but only some of them will have the economic security we associate with it.

Now, we could also ask whether the protests address working class issues. And the answer to that question is no, with the exception of one demand which addresses the costs of studying. 

But given the scale of the protests, and the shrinking of the middle class, we cannot say this is a middle class movement. That’s unlike previous waves of protest, including those against violence that happened two years ago.

A strike by energy workers could deliver the decisive blow.

It’s not just those who have time and means and maybe some left liberal ideological worldview. It’s also small cities and villages and people living in them—places I’ve never heard of.

It’s also sucked up the people who were also active in the environmental movement who are not middle class. They are basically defending their existence and their local communities. And it’s helped also by the agricultural workers who have been protesting for their rights to work.

SW: What’s the situation with organised labour?

The teachers’ unions organised strikes since the mass protests started. There has been an ongoing strike of educational workers in elementary and high schools since September.  They want higher wages and a safer work environment, which rose after a school shooting in Belgrade in 2023.

The students and the general public called for an escalation of this strike. To everybody’s surprise, high school students made blockades by themselves. They wanted to support their teachers.

This month the teachers’ trade unions have signed a deal with the government. It will secure higher salaries, but also places a moratorium on strikes until 2028. It remains to be seen how the teachers will react to this deal.

Recently, workers of the public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia pressured bosses to allow reporting about the protests. This led to a prime time news report about a huge gathering in Novi Sad on the 1 February. The government was infuriated and stated that the public broadcaster broke all principles of journalism.

At one point it seemed that a strike of the workers in the energy sector was likely. If they went on strike, that would hit the regime hard. In fact, the stoppage of energy delivery could deliver the decisive blow. But what we’ve witnessed so far are a few small protests organised by unions in the sector.

SW: What’s the mood among people in the movement after the resignation of prime minister Milos Vucevic earlier this month?  

There was a nice headline in a Croatian magazine that read, “Some unimportant guy resigned”.

The prime minister isn’t really the one who is pulling the strings and so far the protests have not waned.

On the contrary, students from Belgrade organised an 80 kilometres walk to Novi Sad for 1 February. It was to take part in the protests to mark the third month of the railway station tragedy.

Comradery filled the air as people arriving from different cities to Novi Sad greeted each other. People were preparing food and tea for the tens of thousands of protesters who blocked all three bridges of Novi Sad over the Danube river.

The outcome of this movement is still very much an open question. We don’t know the next move of the government. We also don’t know if the opposition parties can come up with a stance that can win the support of the majority needed for a parliamentary victory.

But for the first time since the Progressive Party came to power, people truly hope and believe that the days of Vucic’s rule are numbered. You can feel that in the air.

• You can read more by Iskra Krstić at Mašina