Serbia Protests: Politicians Resign, the Problems Endure

The railway station in Novi Sad, the second largest city of Serbia, was constructed in 1964. Completed in just 18 months, with a distinctive saw-shaped roof, the station was a flagship building for the city and railway modernisation in the state capitalist Yugoslav republic. 50 years later however, due to lack of funding and no renovations, it had become a dilapidated shell of itself. The concrete had degraded and whole parts of the building were out of use.⁽¹⁾

Serbia, now a formally “sovereign” state, has been attempting to join the European Union since 2009 but was also one of the first countries to join the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China's attempt to expand its economic and political influence beyond Asia.⁽²⁾ It took until 2021 however for renovations on the railway station in Novi Sad to finally start with the help of a consortium of Chinese companies (all in the lead up to a general election and European Capital of Culture celebrations). Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia and founding member of the populist ruling party, proudly celebrated the hasty reopening of the station in March 2022 with Viktor Orbán, the far-right Prime Minister of Hungary, at his side. Vučić proclaimed: “This is our way to modern Europe – our way to a better, progressive Serbia.”⁽³⁾

Further renovations then continued into 2024, and the station was reopened again on 5 July. Doubts were raised however about the quality of the work done and whether the concrete canopy of the saw-shaped roof had even been reconstructed. Those doubts were well-founded as on 1 November tragedy struck – the canopy collapsed, leading to the deaths of 15 people.

From Grief to Anger

Days of mourning were declared and vigils for the victims were held. But grief quickly turned to anger. As the first mass demonstrations, student occupations and road blockades started, the authorities responded with violence and provocation – tear gas, arrests, and attacks on protesters (including a few cases of government sympathisers ramming their cars into crowds). This only inflamed the tensions and brought more people out onto the streets.

By December the protests had spread to other Serbian cities – the issue was clearly no longer just the structural failure of a building that collapsed, but the structural failure of the system itself. Many wished to see the Vučić government held accountable for years of corruption, censorship, harassment of journalists, and political violence. On 24 January, the students made a call for a “general strike” which seems to have garnered some sympathy from workers in the education, health, transport and entertainment sectors.⁽⁴⁾

A number of high ranking officials, including Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, have since resigned in an attempt to calm down the situation but the protests continue. The demands formulated by the students⁽⁵⁾ have not been met:

Publication of all documentation related to the Novi Sad Railway Station reconstruction, whose canopy collapse has raised suspicions of high-level corruption and government involvement.
Identification of individuals responsible for physically attacking students and professors during peaceful vigils, followed by the initiation of criminal proceedings against them.
Dropping criminal charges against students arrested or detained during protests and suspension of ongoing proceedings.
A 20 per cent increase in the budget for (currently underfunded) higher education, which should go toward reducing tuition fees, improving the student welfare system, and improving the overall quality of education.

What Next for the Movement?

Many of the student occupations and mass demonstrations are organised through plenums, where discussions take place and decisions are made directly by the participants. There are certain shades of the 2014 unrest in neighbouring Bosnia here, in which plenums also played a role.⁽⁶⁾ However, the plenums in Bosnia gradually became dominated by NGOs and liberal activists. In Serbia, the plenums also remain trapped within the framework of civic democracy and student politics. But these too are spaces in which revolutionary perspectives, pointing beyond capitalist reform, could be put forward. Indeed, similar forms of organisation – mass assemblies and strike committees – have in the past served as organs of working class self-organisation.⁽⁷⁾ If the working class is to take a more active role in the proceedings, it will need to re-discover the historical memory of its past struggles.

Asset stripping, privatisation, outsourcing, and deregulation are now all inextricable features of the global financial system. The multinationals benefit, while public spaces and the natural environment suffer. Last year's protests over planned lithium mining in Serbia by Anglo-Australian companies already highlighted similar issues.⁽⁸⁾ The fall of the Vučić government will not fundamentally change this. What's happening in Serbia is not unique. Widespread anger at governments, which are seen to be directly or indirectly responsible for deaths in so-called natural or man-made disasters, has been triggering mass demonstrations across the world, be that over floods in Spain, a train crash in Greece or earthquakes in Turkey.⁽⁹⁾ And right now, inspired by the events in Serbia, students in Bosnia are also beginning to rally in protest over last year’s deadly floods.⁽¹⁰⁾ The ongoing economic crisis and the intensifying drive to war mean less and less money is spent on public infrastructure and provisions for emergencies. The cost is counted in working class lives.

Only in a world where our needs, not profits, dictate human activity, can we truly begin to resolve the structural failures of a capitalist system long past its sell by date. But only the mass movement of the working class can bring such a world about. In Serbia as across the world: we don't want to die for your profits!

Dyjbas
Communist Workers’ Organisation
10 February 2025