Student protests in Serbia: "The movement cannot afford to stop now"

Sunday 16 March 2025, by Vladimir Unkovski-Korica


On January 28, the ongoing mass protest movement in Serbia toppled the government, ushering in the biggest challenge to Aleksandar Vučić’s authoritarian rule, which has been in place for more than a decade

The timeline of events is now well known to readers of Western media. On November 1, the awning of the railway station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15 people. As the country is still recovering from a mass school shooting in May 2023, many people have entered into a state of shock and mourning following this latest disaster. But something changed on November 22, when the regime’s henchmen attacked a gathering of students and staff at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Drama in tribute to the victims of the Novi Sad collapse.

Towards a mass movement

In the following days, the blockade of faculties spread to other higher and technical education institutions. The students made several demands, including the request for the publication of all documents related to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station, but also the dropping of charges against the arrested protesters, the prosecution of the low-ranking officials who physically attacked the protesters, and a 20 per cent reduction in tuition fees.

A month after the November 22 attack, the movement had gained momentum. Three-quarters of higher education institutions were occupied. In addition, the spirit of revolt took hold of primary and secondary school students and their teachers. Already in conflict with the state, teachers defied minimum service laws and their compromised union leaderships, going on indefinite strike in many cases.

The strikes also affected other sectors, unevenly: media workers, bus drivers, lawyers and even groups of miners expressed their support for the students’ demands. In addition, a campaign of civil disobedience spread throughout the country. Blocking roads and highways became the movement’s favourite tactic, joined by farmers.

On December 22, 100,000 people demonstrated in Belgrade in the largest mass demonstration since the fall of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. If the government hoped that the movement would stop after the holiday season, it was wrong. The initiative “Stop, Serbia!” – a response to the ruling parliamentary group “Serbia must not stop!” – led to more than 231 local demonstrations.

The movement culminated on January 24 with what was called a "general strike," a day of strikes and protests that coincided with separate, but also massive, boycotts of retail chains not only in Serbia but also in neighbouring Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, all of which became independent states from Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Government crisis

A few days later, during a 24-hour blockade of Belgrade’s busiest traffic intersection, regime supporters brutally beat a student in Novi Sad, escalating tensions. The government of Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned the next day, while President Vučić addressed the nation, announcing a pardon for the protesters and a government reshuffle, pending new elections.

Vučić said calls for transparency had been met by the release of thousands of pages of documents, a claim refuted by a study by the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Civil Engineering. Vučić rejected opposition calls for a transitional government of experts to be set up pending new elections, illustrating the level of pressure he is under.

Rather than easing tensions, the government’s resignation and the nervousness of the regime’s strongman appear to have emboldened the student movement, which organized a massive march on the 80 kilometres from Belgrade to Novi Sad, where tens of thousands of protesters blocked the three bridges over the Danube on January 31.

But the initiative has generated deeper support. Residents of towns and villages along the march route took to the streets to greet the students and held barbecues in support. Taxi associations also pledged dozens of vehicles to help transport students to Belgrade after the Novi Sad demonstration.

Vučić, for his part, has been touring the country, greeting dwindling crowds, in which people, emboldened by the situation, have openly challenged him. Assailed, Vučić claims that the state is threatened from outside and from within. He says that any change of government would undermine the success of its economic model based on foreign direct investment (FDI). Serbia attracted a record €5 billion in FDI last year, making it a regional leader and one of the fastest-growing European economies since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Support from abroad

But who could possibly want to topple such a successful government? The major powers have rushed to support Vučić in recent weeks. The European Commission’s director-general for enlargement, Gert Jan Koopman, has said that the EU “will neither accept nor support a violent change of power in Serbia.” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has made similar statements.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s special presidential envoy for peace negotiations in Serbia and Kosovo between 2019 and 2021, Richard Grenell, noted that the United States does not support "those who undermine the rule of law or take control of government buildings by force", while Moscow denounced a "colour revolution" and Beijing highlighted Belgrade’s ability to preserve peace and stability.

All this reflects the relative success of Vučić’s balancing act in international politics. While courting Chinese investment by making Serbia China’s key partner in its 14+1 initiative to promote trade and investment relations between China and Central and Eastern European countries, Vučić has pledged Serbian lithium deposits to the Anglo-Australian multinational Rio Tinto to supply the European Union.

In recent years, the United Arab Emirates has also invested in Belgrade’s waterfront, while Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is seeking to develop a luxury hotel project in Belgrade on the site of the former army headquarters, which was bombed by NATO in 1999 and has since served as an unofficial memorial site.

The major powers are scrambling to take a position in Serbia, but have no reason to hasten Vučić’s downfall. However, they have no permanent allies in the country, only interests, and they will continue to defend them whether Vučić remains in power or not. Given the scale of the geopolitical turmoil around the Black Sea – with Russia’s war with Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria – threatening to worsen regional instability, a chaotic change of government in Serbia would not benefit anyone.

Opposition at home

However, the Serbian population is in revolt. To understand this, it must be emphasized that, despite strong growth in Serbian GDP, close to 4 per cent last year, the standard of living is deteriorating. The country ranks 34th out of 41 European countries in a ranking established by the World Population Review in April 2024.

While average wages have increased significantly in recent years, the cost of living has also increased, driven by demand-side inflation, energy inflation, and monopolies. Food inflation has caused the price of basic necessities to nearly double since 2021. Regional wage disparities are widening, and a high unemployment rate of over 8 per cent persists. It is no coincidence that Serbia lost 7 per cent of its population between 2011 and 2022, reflecting a mass exodus abroad.These statistics are not enough to explain why the Serbian people are in revolt. In fact, all the investment projects mentioned above, linked to China, Rio Tinto, the EU, the UAE and the US, have faced massive opposition in one form or another, due to their destructive impact on social fabrics, environmental conditions, urban dynamics and regional balances.

Since 2014, the growing anger of Serbs has given rise to major waves of protests, but this anger has hardly been expressed politically. Unfortunately, the Serbian political opposition remains dominated by a variety of liberal or conservative nationalist forces that offer little in the way of a transformative agenda. It is no coincidence that Vučić’s party continues to outpace all opposition groups in the polls, or that its tried and tested method of overcoming popular discontent is to return to the ballot box.

Its power is more solid there than on the streets, where popular sentiment is not contained within the narrow channels of representative democracy. The ruling party’s domination of public sector jobs, the media, the judiciary, the electoral process and, ultimately, the repressive apparatus of the state means that the stability of the regime is ensured by the use of elections, while the public sphere is the preferred terrain of protest.

And now?

The student movement, the spearhead of the popular movement in recent months, has shown a remarkable ability to overcome the regime’s manoeuvres. Its determination to maintain its demands has already defeated several government attempts to calm the protest movement with carrots and sticks.

But the time will soon come when the question of political power will be posed. The country is increasingly ungovernable, and Vučić has shown that he understands that his position is under threat, raising the possibility of a referendum on his mandate, or new elections. The movement cannot afford to stop now. It must get rid of Vučić and fight for power.

To achieve this, the movement must claim independence from existing political forces. Without an alternative vision of society, this will prove difficult. Some sectors of the movement have already begun to accept the opposition’s call for a government of experts, pending new elections. However, such an eventuality would leave many entrenched interests intact and would not challenge class inequalities in Serbia, not to mention the deep tentacles of the great powers in Serbian politics.

As Vincent Bevins has shown in his book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, mass movements dominated the decade 2010-2020, but their aspirations were rarely fulfilled, worldwide. One of the main reasons is the weakness of the left and its strategic vision within the movements themselves. Serbia is no exception, and its left is weak and atomized.

But the mass movement in Serbia has achieved gains that are worth defending in the coming weeks, months, and years. Through their popular decision-making methods built in the heat of the struggle, such as plenums and general assemblies, students have laid the foundations for the future democratization of academic institutions. Striking workers also increasingly see the need to democratize trade unions, replace compromised officials with more combative elements, and build grassroots activist networks that can act independently of their leaders.

Moreover, the popularity of the demand for a general strike and the fighting spirit of some sectors of the working class, not seen since the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime, represent a leap in popular consciousness. The willingness to carry out actions in workplaces with political objectives, complementing and strengthening forms of mass civil disobedience, suggests that a rudimentary but real class consciousness is taking shape.

As Serbia enters a period of longer political instability, reflecting greater international uncertainty, the country’s left has an unprecedented opportunity to root itself more deeply in the working class and fight for a more democratic and just society. By connecting the most progressive demands of previous waves of protest – for democratic freedoms, environmental protection, and the common good – to the current collective cry for justice, the left can show that the problem is much broader than corruption and build organizations and institutions capable of delivering real change.

February 4, 2025


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Vladimir Unkovski-Korica is a member of Marks21 in Serbia. He is a historian and researcher who is currently Lecturer in Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. His upcoming book entitled “The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment” will be released soon.


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