On the eve of a mass demonstration expected on 15^th March, Vladimir Unkovski-Korica interviews a student about what is going on in Serbia

A mass, student-led protest movement erupted in Serbia after a canopy collapsed killing fifteen people in the country’s second city, Novi Sad, in November. The movement has several demands, but, tellingly, its call for accountability and transparency over what happened in Novi Sad has not been met despite months of protests. The authoritarian president has held on through a mix of carrot and stick, but the movement has continued to spread beyond its initial student base. Hundreds of thousands have hit the streets across Serbia in recent months, strikes have halted key sectors, and there have been two ‘general strikes’, a combination of strikes by some workers, but in fact largely protests and consumer boycotts by the general population. The student movement has now called for an extension of its direct democratic forms of organising (‘plenums’) to the rest of society, as well as a decisive demonstration on 15 March. Here, Counterfire’s Vladimir Unkovski-Korica interviews Miloš Bokun, a graduate in international relations and currently on master studies in Belgrade, and a member of Marks21, about the movement’s achievements and the challenges ahead. 

Serbia’s student protests are in their fifth month despite the government resigning in late January. What has been going on and why? 

Well a lot actually … The governement resigned after just two months of blockades and protests, which is a sign of their power right now. However, the greater battle is being waged against alienation, hopelessness and despair that has been wrought by decades of privatisation, neoliberalism and the pitfalls of parliamentary politics. The student blockades managed to release all the repressed emotions people felt for so long but couldn’t express or articulate through the means that bourgeouis politics enables. As time went on, the blockades consolidated more and more, the support for them mounted and the regime is increasingly on the defensive. More and more people are fighting back, workers are going on strikes and protesting and the atmosphere is filled with rage and fury.  

How have student demands and tactics evolved over time? 

Our initial strategy was to spread the blockades to the entire University of Belgrade, which we sucedeed in doing in about a month. By mid-January the blockades spread to all cities with universities in Serbia (five of them). The demands were fixed from the start. Release of documents related to the fall of the roof at the railway station, prosecution of persons close to the ruling party who attacked students and a 50% decrease in tuitions. The last request was faced with a lot of backlash from both the professors and the wider academic community. They described the request as utopian or they moralised that it is unjust to ‘demand money when people died’. As if money didn’t kill them. 

The law about student tuition was passed last week, which is a major success for the movement. As to the tactics, something that caught my attention, and that of a large number of the population, were marches from Belgrade and other cities to a city where a protest is being held, to symbolise the long and ardous road to justice. This is something that inspired a large number of people who supported us to step it up and start rebelling more openly. Other than this, so far the main tactic has been a blockade of a big intersection for large periods of time or a symbolic protest in front of state institutions. An interesting phenomen is also the blockade of former student institutions such as the Student Cultural Centre, privatised during the 90s, and the Cultural Centre of Belgrade by cultural workers. Inside, plenums are the main decision-making body and it would be amazing if this would remain so in the future, to permit the existence of such free spaces with alternative forms of organising than state or private ownership.  

The student movement, especially in the past month or so, tended to ally more and more with workers who support student demands, some of them by strikes. The longest strike has been going on in schools, going into the eighth week, while social workers have been on strike for more than ten days and attorneys halted business for a month, but there have also been protests by workers in the energy sector, public transport, the post and the public broadcast service (RTS). 

The biggest testament to this alliance of students and workers was the protest organised for 8 March where workers gathered in front of their respective ministries and offices and walked towards Republic square in the city centre. There, workers held speeches as representatives of their sectors (among them all those listed above and some others) and expressed their solidarity with students. This protest was in effect the inauguration of the people’s front (or social front translated literally), which included diverse sectors of both blue and white-collar workers as well as agricultural workers. So far, we have held two discussions with all of these sectors together at the faculty and tried to come up with a strategy for the future. The goals, aside from the student demands, are not yet clearly set and this is something that has to be solved sooner rather than later, lest the participants lose motivation. 

The tactics being proposed right now include blockades of intersections and state instituions for prolonged periods of time, as well as spreading of ‘the word of the plenums’ throughout the country. 

What are the debates about the way forward for the student movement? 

The debates vary according to the forum where they are being discussed. Pro-opposition media keep touting phrases like the rule of law and fight against corruption while the solution being offered for the crisis is a transitionary governement (opposition and regime parties) or an expert one (without questioning who picks the ‘experts’). As to the student movement, there were also initiatives at a couple of faculties for the expert governement to be added as one of the demands, but they were quickly shunned. The current, official political line of the blockades in Belgrade is contained in an open letter which calls for the people to organise in plenums or to form a ‘zbor’ (roughly translated as a gathering/commune) in their towns, neighbourhoods and communities, and to the decide collectively about what bothers them. 

The idea in effect is to counter the expectations that the student movement alone can solve the current political crisis and to share this responsibility with the rest of the population by calling on them to self-organise. However we have to admit that this state of emergency that lasted for the last four months cannot go on for long. Accordingly we should try to work out a solution – together with the rest of our allies – to the current political crisis which is deeply systemic, but it also concerns the regime and what happens to it in the near future. If the regime doesn’t fall, it’s revenge will be brutal and the consequences for future organising devastating. 

The next critical day is 15 March is: why? 

To be honest I’m not really sure. The idea of 15 March came from a lack of a big protest in Belgrade for more than a month. After the blockades that toppled the governement, we had protests in Novi Sad, then in Kragujevac for 15 February and then in Niš for 1 January. Logically, then, Belgrade had to be the culmination of this tour around the country and the date was chosen. There are several ideas about the protest and an awful lot of expectations that something big will happen without any idea what that could be. This is a problem. The people are expecting an escalation in violence and police repression and the government confirmed the latter a couple of days ago. However, other than this there seems to be nothing else to expect. We will have to see how the spreading of plenums and self-organising will pick up around the country, but that is something that takes time and right now things are changing fast and the governement is preparing to ratchet up repression.  

What are the challenges ahead after 15 March? 

In the absence of a short-term political solution, things could go different ways. One is that the escalation of violence and riots brings about police repression which will in turn feed the anger that caused the violence and so on. Eventually the movement will either be shut down by this repression or the regime will back off and someone else will take its place. But who? The military to calm the situation or a transitional government which the majority doesn’t want right now? In the event of a fall of government, there isn’t an alternative that is on the table. Some would say that such an alternative shouldn’t exist. Why focus on government when we have direct democracy? This argument is valid up to a point. To the point where we are reminded by this very government of its foundations – brutal force and class relations – something that direct democracy cannot counter by itself without a strong and coherent organisation which can fight back. Foreign meddling isn’t excluded if the great powers that support president Aleksandar Vučić got a better offer from someone from the opposition who is willing to take his place by force.  

In any case, what is happening in Serbia is an historic event which can send reverberations throughout the continent which is increasingly militarised and sliding towards fascism. For a progressive option to succeed, the movement needs a victory and the next big step is the mounting of a mass strike by workers as well as blockades throughout the country which will put enough pressure on the regime. The hope is that, in the aftermath, the legacy of the blockades and the shift in consciousness continue to develop and open up spaces in the imagination for a world radically different than the one we live in.