Is Serbia’s student protest movement at an impasse?
Two weeks have passed since I published my analysis of Serbia’s student protests. While the situation remains fluid and fast-developing, it has not changed dramatically. The student movement continues to draw impressive numbers, with the recent rally in Novi Sad — marking three months since the November 1 tragedy at the railway station — attracting tens of thousands of people. The protest in Kragujevac on February 15, which brought together students from different Serbian cities along with local citizens, also drew tens of thousands of participants.
Yet, despite their persistence, the student protests have failed to gain traction beyond their core base, particularly among the working class. As I previously noted, it is the working class — hired employees — who form the backbone of any society, not students or the so-called middle class. While many passive observers remain sympathetic, the sheer size of this uninvolved majority is significant.
Calls for a general strike have fallen on deaf ears, with none of the major trade unions having expressed readiness to support such calls. This is not merely a reflection of the unions’ inertia, weakness and degree of accommodation to the government. It signals a broader issue: the student movement has failed to forge alliances with labour, whose participation is critical for any mass movement.
At the same time, the government has demonstrated its own mobilising capacity by gathering thousands of its supporters (some estimates put it at 20,000) for a counter-rally in Sremska Mitrovica, in the north of the country, on the same day as the student protest in Kragujevac. This suggests the government retains a solid social base, making prospects for broader protest expansion even more uncertain.
Challenges and contradictions
From the outset, the students’ position has been inherently contradictory. A change of government has never been among their demands. In fact, when the government resigned in January, the students dismissed it as entirely irrelevant to their protest. This raises a fundamental paradox: they expect the same government that they blame for the current sorry state of affairs to make amends — to reform itself and, like Baron Munchausen, miraculously pull itself (and the country) out of the quagmire by its own hair.
The second major problem is the lack of a clear strategy. In essence, there is no apparent mechanism to force compliance beyond continued street protests and blockades of university buildings and public spaces. But what happens if the government does not comply? The protest rally in Kragujevac acknowledged that the government has failed to meet even a single demand. If three months of mobilisations have produced no substantive results, what is the next step? Does the movement have a plan beyond repeating the same form of action? If not, then the protests risk becoming a performance of dissent rather than a vehicle for actual change.
The core dilemma is evident: if the current form of protests has not brought any results, should the strategy be reconsidered? How? And, even if a more confrontational or escalatory approach is proposed, do the students have the capacity to sustain and intensify their actions given the lacklustre general reaction from broader society? The student movement remains relatively isolated and without strong allies. It is unclear whether it can generate the necessary pressure to force the government’s hand.
The third, related problem is the immutability of their demands. If the government has refused to meet them for the past three months, how realistic is it to expect compliance in the foreseeable future (say, in the next four to six months)? If the current set of demands has not led to broader public mobilisation, should they be modified or expanded to attract greater support and inject new momentum into the protests?
As things stand, the government appears to be waiting out the movement, calculating that over time fatigue, frustration and the pressures of daily life will cause participation to dwindle. And unless the protests transform into a larger popular movement, this is exactly what will happen — they will gradually dissipate without leaving a lasting impact.
Revolutionary preconditions and the limits of protest
In my initial analysis, I applied Vladimir Lenin’s concept of a revolutionary situation to Serbia’s current context, emphasising that a revolution does not emerge from every revolutionary crisis. Lenin outlined three essential conditions: first, the majority of workers must fully understand the need for revolution and be willing to risk everything for it; second, the ruling class must experience a governmental crisis so severe that it draws even the most politically disengaged masses into action; and third, the existence of an able leadership. None of these conditions has yet materialised in Serbia.
The first condition remains unmet, not simply because students refuse dialogue with potential allies, but because their demands, while resonating strongly, have not evolved beyond their initial formulation. The protests have gained enough public traction to establish an equilibrium between the demonstrators and the government, yet assuming that the same demands — rigid and immutable — will generate increasing momentum over time is unrealistic.
Dialogue is not important for its own sake, but because through engagement with broader social forces — trade unions, professional associations and genuine NGOs — demands can be further developed and transformed to address the concerns and aspirations of a wider segment of society. Without this evolution, the protests risk stagnation, as their initial impact becomes absorbed into the political routine.
The second condition — a genuine crisis of the ruling class — also remains absent. The government has not only responded to public pressure by raising criminal charges and arresting a group of officials deemed responsible for the Novi Sad tragedy; it has gone further and initiated high-profile corruption cases that have resulted in the arrests of politicians from its own ranks, such as Obrenovac Mayor Milorad Grčić. However, rather than signalling an internal fracture, these moves appear to be a controlled damage control operation — an attempt to absorb public outrage without destabilising the political establishment itself.
The latest developments have not undermined the governing capacity of the ruling class, nor have they exposed significant fissures within the establishment. The government continues to function with relative cohesion and the ruling elite remains firmly in control of the state apparatus.
Moreover, the protests themselves have become routinised and even normalised, both in public perception and in the government’s response. Initially unsettled by the scale of the demonstrations, the government has since adjusted, integrating them into its political calculations. Authorities now provide security for the protests, logistical support for students during long marches, and even some accommodation for them to stay in — hardly the response of a regime facing an existential threat.
Lenin stressed that the most crucial condition for revolutionary success is the existence of a clear leadership force with the necessary strategy, tactics and organisation to guarantee victory. A leadership that can ensure a collective action “strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, “falls, if it is not toppled over.” The students have demonstrated remarkable organisation throughout the protests, but have not been able to offer society at large a clear program and strategy, which is the third condition.
As protests become routine, lacking mass support and failing to yield tangible results, the risk of their gradual dissipation grows exponentially. Whether the students will recognise and address these limitations or the movement fades into yet another moment of transient unrest is not only a challenge for them but for society as a whole. However idealistic, general and certainly reformist (rather than revolutionary) their demands may be, they contain within them the kernel of a revolutionary transformation. The crucial question is whether society at large will engage with these demands, unpacking them into a concrete revolutionary program. If this does not happen, the protests will inevitably dissolve into another fleeting episode of discontent.
Lessons from history
History has repeatedly demonstrated that revolutions are impossible without broad mass support. In his analysis of the February 1917 Revolution in Russia, Leon Trotsky emphasised that despite years of simmering popular indignation — occasionally erupting in protests and strikes — the revolutionary moment itself took even the Bolsheviks, and leftist parties in general, by surprise. In fact, just a day before the revolution began, the Bolsheviks passed a resolution advising against an uprising. Yet, the very next day, spontaneous strikes broke out, quickly escalating into a general strike across all major industries.
This sequence of events illustrates Lenin’s first condition for revolution: the mass involvement of working people, their embrace of revolutionary objectives and their readiness to sacrifice for them is far more decisive than the proclamations or political intentions of revolutionary organisations. Mass mobilisation, not preordained strategies or party directives, is what turns crises into revolutions.
However, unlike in revolutionary moments, where mass mobilisations actively challenge the ruling structure, Serbia’s protests have yet to generate a viable alternative force capable of channelling public discontent into a transformative movement. While the protests have made a noticeable dent in the ruling party’s popularity, they have also further delegitimised opposition parties, which have struggled to find their place in the movement and bitterly complained about the students’ “exclusivity.” This echoes a broader pattern where mass uprisings often disrupt not only the ruling order but also the established opposition, exposing their weaknesses and inability to channel discontent into a coherent political force.
Trotsky’s second crucial lesson is that, at a certain point, the fate of any revolution is determined by a shift in the disposition of the security apparatus. Against a well-organised, well-disciplined and well-armed force, unarmed or lightly armed masses have no real chance of victory. However, no deep national crisis can fail to affect the police, military and other security institutions, at least to some degree. This creates the possibility — but not the guarantee — of revolution.
Crucially, however, the defection or neutrality of security forces does not occur spontaneously or as a result of mere agitation. The conditions for such a transformation must be actively created through sustained pressure and fractures within the ruling establishment. While deep crises often create fractures within the security apparatus, Serbia has not reached a stage where police or military forces show signs of division.
Serbia’s recent history confirms these essential lessons. The October 5 Revolution of 2000 (which toppled Slobodan Milošević’s regime) was not a social revolution in the full sense of the word but a transfer of power from one group of neoliberal bourgeois elites to another with a slightly different political orientation. But it would not have been possible without mass strikes across the country — most notably the miners’ strike in Kolubara and the resulting power supply interruptions — together with the involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which directly appealed to the security forces not to use violence against protesters, and participation of other key actors.
Students, to borrow Lenin’s expression, can serve as “the leaven” of revolution — an agent of fermentation and agitation — but they are not the ones who ultimately make or break revolutions. The burden of transformation lies with broader social forces, particularly the working class, whose mobilisation remains the decisive factor in determining whether these protests will become a catalyst for systemic change or simply another unrealised potential.