Since the collapse of the Novi Sad station canopy on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people, occupations, blockades and protests led by students have been organised across Serbia. This calamity, caused by corruption, sparked a wave of indignation throughout the country. At the time of writing this article in April, over a million people across Serbia have taken part and voiced their support for the students’ demands. Demonstrations are being held throughout the country.
The mass mobilisation sparked by students recently escalated with a gigantic protest organised in Belgrade on 15 March, which drew as many as half a million people. Estimating the size of the demonstration is difficult, but likely between ten and fifteen percent of Serbia’s population were on the streets to support the students’ demands. Serbia is a small country with a population of 6.6 million people. If this were the United States, that would be equivalent to over 50 million people mobilising. Mass mobilisations of this scale are unprecedented in the modern history of the former Yugoslavia. The regime-controlled press, of course, tried to hide the real numbers of participants, claiming there were ‘only’ 107,000 people – but this petty trick is fooling no one with eyes to see.
On the day of the giant protest, 15 March, students cautiously moved the protest from one location to another, ending it an hour early due to the use of violence by regime thugs and even a sonic weapon against the people, in an attempt to cause a serious incident.
Neither the mass demonstrations nor the giant wave of mass support for the students (80 percent of the population according to recent polls) have been able to stop the current regime. However, the courage and fighting spirit of the students, and the cultural interconnectedness, similar conditions and failed corrupt capitalist regimes in the former Yugoslav countries – all of which have suffered the consequences of the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s – have led to the protests resonating and inspiring youth and workers throughout the region.
Solidarity has come from Croatia, where the spillover beyond Serbia’s borders has taken a different form. The current major strike by education workers, the biggest strike in recent years, is also partially inspired by the events in Serbia.
Croatia experienced a series of gigantic strikes in 1999 – around 246 in that year alone – during NATO’s bombing of Serbia. Many of these ended in the workers occupying factories for months. Due to specific historical circumstances and the traditions of the working class in Croatia, discontent is expressed less through mass demonstrations and more through strikes. During the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Croatia experienced a series of general strikes aimed at stopping the privatisation process.
A mass protest also erupted in Macedonia last month in response to a fire that cruelly claimed 62 lives in a Kočani nightclub, injuring 193. This tragedy exposed the corruption and incompetence of the authorities and provoked a similar wave of mass outrage to the events in Serbia. On the other side of the border, Serbian President Vučić’s attempt to turn this tragedy to his advantage has backfired on him. In a despicable stunt, Vučić entered the intensive care unit of one of the victims being treated in Serbia, thus compromising their safety as they struggled for their lives. As a result, the student protesters in Serbia are now demanding that whoever allowed Vučić into the intensive care unit should be prosecuted.
Zborovi
The masses learn from experience, and this includes the students. Through the struggle they have initiated, they are now drawing new conclusions. This movement was not planned – it was improvised and spontaneous from the very beginning. It ran deeper than its immediate cause, catalysing the accumulated anger against the system.
In its first phase, the movement consisted of organised mass protests led by the students using ‘plenums’ (assemblies) as a form of self-organisation for the struggle. We have written previously about the advantages of plenums. Within two months, the struggle and consciousness of the students evolved, manifesting itself in a call for a general strike.
On 24 January 2025, after two months of student occupations, demonstrations, and road blockades, calls for a general strike united students with workers in IT, journalism, education, and culture. While the strike was only partial and affected only a few sectors, it showed the growing momentum of the protest movement. The idea of a general strike had mass support, with over 80 percent of those who supported the students in favour of the strike. With the resignation of the Prime Minister, Vučić decided to sacrifice his own government in order to try and defuse the movement and gain some room to manoeuvre. However, this manoeuvre failed miserably, leading to the next stage of the movement, which culminated in the largest protest in Serbian history on 15 March. Footage of Belgrade overflowing with people was seen around the world.
The students, learning from their experiences in the movement, have now reached their most progressive conclusion so far. The student movement grew from strength to strength organising around plenums (mass meetings) in the faculties and schools. They are now calling for the establishment and spread of mass assemblies in the neighbourhoods (zborovi, the plural of zbor, meaning ‘assembly’), an appeal that resonated widely with the formation of hundreds of zborovi. The movement is entering a second, more decisive phase. The students say, “Everyone into zborovi” – what the ‘plenum’ is for students, the zbor is for the people.
But to understand why the movement needs zborovi, we must understand some details from the history of Serbia and the broader region of the former Yugoslavia.
The term ‘assemblies’ (zborovi) first appeared in the region during the struggle against the Ottoman Empire and was used during the Serbian Revolution (First Serbian Uprising) in the early 19th century. Local communities organised themselves into their own mass assemblies, where they made decisions about how to continue their struggle for national emancipation.
Similar things happened in Lika and parts of Dalmatia in Croatia. Later, during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the term persisted, and during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the constitution allowed workers in assemblies to make decisions regarding some aspects of management of the factories and workplaces.
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and other former republics retained the concept of zborovi as a form of local regional self-governance – in Macedonia, the term sobranie is still used, with the same meaning. For this reason, the students’ call for mass assemblies is tied to a legal structure that technically already exists, as such mass citizens’ assemblies are a part of our history during uprisings and revolutions. It is also interesting that in 1920, numerous zborovi were also organised in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, just before the proclamation of the Obznana, which outlawed the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and any organisation connected to it. Opposition to the Obznana culminated in a general strike in Zagreb.
The situation in Serbia is often painted in regional and international media as tainted by Serbian nationalism – some even evoking the spectre of the ultra-reactionary Chetnik movement. However, the widespread solidarity with the movement, especially from Croatia, and the inspiring footage of unity between Serbs and Muslims in Novi Pazar show that behind the movement itself stands a general desire for the unity in struggle of all Yugoslav people, in opposition to nationalism and ethnic and religious divisions.
The significance of zborovi in Serbia
Mass assemblies (zborovi) began sprouting like mushrooms across Serbia after the call was made in early March. At the time of writing, hundreds of zborovi have been held across the country. On the day of the initial call alone, more than 50 cities and municipalities responded. Along with the call, students published a handbook for organising assemblies. It explains that citizen assemblies are the same as student plenums, but organised on a regional basis.
In a previous article, we wrote that organising joint plenums between workers and students is a decisive step forward for the movement. The students have drawn the correct conclusion: the struggle must be connected with the broader masses. The call put out by the students in March was already resonating with the working class and the broader masses, who are responding with greater determination.
Teachers in Serbia, who have been involved in various forms of strike action since the beginning of the protests, have long been organising their actions through their own plenum.
Inspired by the teachers, so-called strukovni zborovi are now being formed. There are workers’ assemblies for the IT sector, educators, and recently, a new assembly of healthcare workers. Last week, an assembly was formed by the workers in a TV station currently under occupation, through which the workers have raised their own demands.
As communists, we call for the generalisation of these assemblies as a necessary step to organise the independent participation of the working class, so that they can raise their own demands and stand at the front of this movement against the regime.
The comments from healthcare workers are particularly interesting, raising questions about the role of the assemblies and what they are meant to do. One outlet reports:
“… healthcare workers took to social media calling for the gathering, urging unity among health professionals, with the goal of meeting, organising, and acting together to protect their profession. They stated that the unions are not doing their job, that they are ‘asleep,’ and that it is necessary to act together, organise, and create a collective and actionable plan.
“Students from the Faculty of Medicine supported the gathering and provided moderators, protective units, and note-takers.”
Assemblies are organised spontaneously via social media or the Viber app. Students often participate as moderators and note-takers.
Additionally, assemblies often make decisions they technically do not have the right to make, at least according to the local government statutes. For example, the zbor in Čačak voted to replace the current mayor, and mass demonstrations are now being held until he resigns.
The widespread appearance of assemblies is a consequence of the widespread radicalisation of the masses. For example, in Niš, people threw eggs at the current mayor. In Kragujevac, the zbor decided that the city should pay the salaries of education workers. If their demands were not met, they threatened to come to the city hall on Wednesday at 6pm to hold a demonstration.
Recently, there has been a tendency towards the centralisation of the peoples’ assemblies. For example, the city of Novi Sad has a “Zbor svih Zborova” (assembly of all assemblies) that has been used to organise the occupation of the TV station. Several different zborovi were also partially centralised and used to send ‘defence units’ around Serbia to protect the students during their blockade of the TV station.
We must be clear. The step of centralising the zborovi and introducing methods of workers’ democracy, such as the election and recall of representatives by local zborovi to a central council, represents the initial step towards the building of an alternative power in society. It poses the question of ‘who decides’ – whether the vast majority of workers and students or the corrupt regime of capitalist oligarchs, incarnated in the Vučić regime. As communists, we fully support any step taken in this direction.
What do the assemblies (zborovi) represent?
Even mainstream news outlets are writing about assemblies as a way for the masses to become politically engaged. Radar Nova reported the words of a student, who summarised:
“Assemblies are an opportunity for citizens to publicly express themselves about the political crisis in their community and, through participation, be reminded that politics is not just about parties. Instead of the usual top-down politics, we now have a Copernican shift where citizens define their own needs and invite others to directly take part in working groups. Holding your own future in your hands is a powerful idea – and naturally, it mobilises people.”
The media reports that the assemblies “give the political power to the people”, and even they unconsciously separate the assemblies from the regular structures of liberal democracy, questioning the significance of the assemblies. One outlet even asked whether they represent a ‘parallel reality’? They are right. It is a potential parallel organ of power developing before our eyes.
Serbia, like all ex-Yugoslav countries, has relatively weak trade union structures. Only about 20 percent of workers in Serbia are unionised, mostly in the public sector, which includes healthcare, education, and public services. However, based on comments from healthcare and education workers, it’s clear that assemblies represent a new form of organisation encompassing all workers, an opportunity for them to bypass the brake represented by the trade union bureaucracies, in which they have lost faith.
The website of the Serbian culture magazine Oblakoder, for example, published an article which raises the issue of insufficient union organisation and that a general strike can only be pursued if the masses organise themselves like the students in plenums.
This had naturally raised the question in the media: “Can assemblies replace unions?” In one interview, a teacher responds affirmatively, saying that this is “a new way of organising.” Workers’ assemblies must organise all workers, especially during a strike or a struggle. The surge in workers’ participation at all levels must also lead the most advanced layers to take control of the trade unions, which are permanent organisations of the working class, to transform them into militant trade unions. As we write, workers are using the assemblies to make the existing unions more militant. The assemblies of education workers, in particular, are tending towards centralisation as they are organising their struggle.
The movement has been marked by distrust toward ‘institutions’ from the very beginning – institutions seen as hijacked by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). The masses and the working class are increasingly coming to the conclusion that they need their own ‘institutions’. Students explain in interviews in the media that, with the idea of forming assemblies, they wanted to overcome the limited ability of the movement to articulate itself politically and try to make it a mass movement. In addition, they have again inadvertently become political leaders themselves, which can be seen in the fact that the masses are currently turning to the students for political advice.
The agendas of workers’ assemblies sometimes include issues like strikes and unpaid wages for teachers. Normally, non-unionised workers have no choice but to write to local authorities and appeal to ‘the relevant institutions’. It is essential that they too form their own workers’ assemblies – like the ones already formed by IT workers, teachers, healthcare professionals and TV workers. Within them, they can decide on next steps, discuss strikes, and even organise them – like the workers’ plenum in Niš did when it voted to strike. They can also fight to make the existing unions more militant.
But even before the students made the call to gather in the assemblies, workers throughout former Yugoslavia knew the traditions of the so-called ‘workers’ unions’. An interesting case is the workers from TENT, a power plant, who organised a strike in January with demands that went far beyond the framework of a regular strike. At the time they announced:
“The law says that strike activities can only begin after the announcement. We have to get the consent of the UGS Nezavisnost [trade union federation] and then we will start. But there will be a strike without their consent, if that is what the workers’ zbor decides.”
Their demands were: “the fulfillment of the demands of students in the blockade, determination of responsibility for the catastrophic situation in the electricity industry – but also the removal of the general director of EPS AD [the state-owned operator of TENT], the entire Executive Board, the Supervisory Board, the Assembly of EPS and the Minister of Mining and Energy.”
Protecting strikes, protests and demonstrations
As the movement escalated, it met with constant provocations by the state, Vučić, SNS and their thugs. Threats have been followed in many cases by vicious attacks. The need to organise self-defence and effective stewarding of protests, blockades, occupations and strikes is now widely understood.
Early on, students formed self-defence units called Dabre to protect themselves from brutal attacks from SNS thugs and provocateurs. In the meantime, spontaneous self-defence units were formed by Serbian army veterans and bikers, which began protecting the students during protests.
Additionally, IT assemblies in Serbia are raising money to pay the overdue salaries of education workers with the support of other workers across Serbia.
This level of class solidarity is not common during periods of so-called social peace. Everything points to the fact that an assembly is not ‘just an assembly,’ and the canopy collapse was far more than just a collapse.
A deep distrust of the whole system
One of the main characteristics of the present political situation in Serbia is that students and others mobilising against the regime have a deep distrust for the whole system, including the established parties that are in ‘opposition’.
The overthrow of Milošević through the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class in October 2000 brought to power an opposition that did not prove capable of achieving the fundamental change demanded by the mass movement. This betrayal created the conditions for the present Vučić regime. For this reason, the masses say both “Vučić is no good,” and “the opposition is no good,” and desire for systemic change. The most advanced layers have already concluded that what is needed is a movement that ultimately becomes a revolution capable of sweeping all of this away.
Where did the movement come from?
The global economic crisis of 2008 destabilised capitalism throughout the world and triggered tectonic shifts in consciousness. The continued crisis has caused a general decline in the quality of life across the world. Over the past 30 years, Serbia has experienced a continuous decline in living standards as a result of the restoration of capitalism. All in all, there is not a single sector or piece of infrastructure in Serbia that could receive a passing grade – from public transport to agriculture, everything is underdeveloped and neglected.
Writing from Britain, Ted Grant described the role played by the students on the eve of May 1968 in France:
“In that atmosphere, the student rebellion developed. It was a symptom of discontent in society. Sons and daughters of the middle class, upper middle class, and even the bourgeoisie rebelled against the rotten values of the ruling class. This movement was a symptom of crisis in the capitalist world. The student demonstrations were violently attacked by elite riot police, notorious for their brutality. The beating of protesters only further enraged students, leading to street battles on the barricades in the Latin Quarter, occupations of universities in Paris, and then throughout France. This in turn sparked a movement among high school students.”
Ted Grant’s description of the movement in France strongly resembles the current movement in Serbia. It is no coincidence that students openly say they draw inspiration from previous movements like those in 1968 in France and the former Yugoslavia. Here, the 1968 movement took a different form, with students making demands not against socialism per se, but against the bureaucracy that eventually restored capitalism. Even ordinary news reports often note that the current movement in Serbia resembles the student struggles of 1968.
The students’ mobilisation is a symptom of a much deeper crisis of the capitalist system. In normal times of relative calm and stability, during which the illusions of liberal democracy hold sway, most people do not actively participate in politics. On the contrary, they are often completely disinterested. Only a minority is politically active. Of course, in Serbia, participation in mass assemblies, particularly in the workplaces, has not yet reached the level of a general mobilisation. However, it is getting stronger and stronger.
The numbers speak volumes. During March alone, according to CRTA, the agency for collecting data, there were 1,697 protests in 378 places, with hundreds of thousands of people involved, and 200 zborovi in Serbia. Thousands of people are involved in the Novi Sad assemblies alone. We can expect that currently tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people in Serbia are participating in assemblies. And Vučić is trying to brush them to one side as “undemocratic”, calling them Bolshevik inventions. It is no wonder that in the media some journalists are connecting these zborovi to a revolution in Serbia.
Trotsky, in The History of the Russian Revolution, defines revolution as the decisive moment when the masses intervene directly in historical events. The making of this can now be seen in Serbia. If we consider what Lenin described as the conditions for revolution, we can see the following:
The first condition is that the crisis provokes divisions and wavering within the ruling class. Serbia’s bourgeoisie definitely shows this, and the local Balkan ruling classes fear the repercussions of a movement that is resonating in various forms across former Yugoslav countries. Vučić could hardly appear more nervous and erratic, and the ‘Serbian Parliament’ reeks of desperation. For months now, students have been publicly accused in the media of supporting Bolshevism, communism and revolution.
The second condition is the wavering of the petty bourgeoisie, which seeks an escape from the crisis, either through the working class or through the capitalists. As Lenin explained, through a firm policy of the working class, under such conditions, support from the middle class could be won.
The third condition is the readiness of the working class to fight. Despite numerous calls from students for a general strike and mobilisation, this has not yet been fully realised. This is partly due to the attitude of the trade union bureaucracy, which has thus far only offered verbal support for the students’ demands and has not spread the call for a general strike among its members. Instinctively, the sections of the working class that are beginning to mobilise, such as the education workers, have created their own organs of struggle, through which they’ve organised strikes. Recently, many strikes have been happening in Serbia, as part of the intensifying class struggle beneath the surface. Workers need to fight for their own demands by setting up their own strike committees.
But above all, what is missing is Lenin’s fourth condition: the existence of a mass revolutionary party, with roots among the workers, that is ready to take the boldest steps to secure victory for the working class.
Because of the lack of such a party, the movement is subject to pressure from different classes. Bourgeois ‘public opinion’, fuelled by the international capitalist media, is trying to describe the movement as the “European way” out of a “system based on corruption”. The idea that a government run by ‘experts’ could guide the transition to a ‘better democratic system’ threatens to derail the movement in pursuit of sterile constitutional reforms, when the source of the rot is the capitalist system itself. Various bourgeois media outlets try to describe this movement as an attempt to establish the ‘rule of law’ and a ‘constitutional state’, or simply as ordinary anti-corruption protests.
It is evident, however, that this ideological campaign is not penetrating deeply into the consciousness of the students at the plenums, and that the aims of the movement go much further than the bourgeois would like. The pressure of bourgeois ideas on the students is intensifying around possible attempts to form a ‘transitional government’ and by forcing students to make a formal decision regarding future elections. At the same time, the regime is becoming more and more aggressive. A serious provocation by the regime could tip the scales and provoke an even more massive revolutionary upsurge, and the generalisation of mass zborovi.
It is in the process of these events that the most militant layers of this movement will be the ones to help form a new mass revolutionary communist party – one that will lay the foundations for a future revolutionary leadership.
What next?
The movement currently lacks decisive, concrete steps for action, but over time it is becoming bolder. From plenums to calls for a general strike, to the formation of mass people’s assemblies, and mass workers’ assemblies. These organs of mass struggle are emerging, and beginning to take a more centralised form.
The movement has been continuing for almost six months now, but it cannot go on forever. However, in continuing, the most advanced layers will inevitably draw increasingly revolutionary conclusions in order to protect themselves from the intrusive petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ideas.
The students are being taught by their experiences, and will be pushed towards the conclusion that they need to call for unified action between zborovi, plenums, and unions, towards a general strike. So far, students have been the focal point of the movement, and they can continue to be. Their call for generalising the formation of mass assemblies (zborovi) was the right move, as there was a real risk that the movement would be isolated from the working class. In taking on a social perspective and calling on the people to mobilise, they judged correctly.
The students have correctly recognised the need for the working class to play a decisive role by fully mobilising its force against the regime. To quote Ted Grant:
“Not a wheel turns, not a phone rings, not a light bulb shines without the kind permission of the working class! Once this enormous power is mobilised, no force on earth can stop it.”
But history teaches us that a revolutionary party cannot be hurried into existence, right before major events. That is exactly what the current movement shows – it suffers chronically from a lack of leadership. On the other hand, this is also its greatest strength in a sense: there are no reformist leaders, no Stalinised parties, and no political options on the left that could steer this situation in the wrong direction, as happened during the revolution in France in 1968.
Yet, students must also be aware that the working class only mobilises in a decisive way when certain conditions arise, and not just because such a mobilisation is desired. That is precisely why the calls for a general strike have not yet produced the desired explosive effect.
However, we can be sure of one thing. From the revolt of the students – most of whom in Serbia are the sons and daughters of the working class – we can sense the discontent of the working class itself. This is a sign of an impending explosion and indicates the intensity of the workers’ fury once they rise, not only in Serbia, but across the Balkans. Parts of the youth and the working class will draw the conclusion from this movement that a revolutionary leadership is necessary to achieve fundamental social change – that is, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with a democratically planned socialist economy.
But for now, the task – of achieving the students’ demands, of establishing a more just system in Serbia, and of overthrowing Vučić – belongs to the working class of Serbia and no one else. To achieve these demands, mass mobilisation and a revolutionary general strike will be necessary — one unprecedented in recent history in this region. The strike will be led by the youngest workers, unburdened by past defeats and cynicism.
As communists, we support the call for generalising the formation of zborovi in every neighbourhood and workplace. We also defend the need to democratically coordinate and centralise them at a regional and national level by introducing methods of workers’ democracy. All delegates should be elected and subject to recall by the assemblies that elected them. The movement towards a general strike will strengthen the tendency towards mass self-organisation through the assemblies, strike committees and councils of delegates elected from the assemblies. These will emerge not just as organs of struggle but also of self-management, as an alternative power to the corrupt capitalist institutions.
All power to the zborovi!
What we are witnessing in Serbia are the early pangs of a revolutionary crisis. The whole of society is affected. The consciousness of the masses is being transformed through the experience of mass activity and the class struggle. The seemingly ‘conservative’ demand of the students ‘that the institutions do their job’ resulted in the spontaneous initiative of the students and wider strata of the people and workers to make their own decisions about society, to organise themselves into assemblies and begin to coordinate and centralise them as the embryonic formations of workers’ power.
In essence, the movement represents an eruption in the simmering, molecular process of revolution that has been taking place in Serbia since the breakup of Yugoslavia. It is an expression of dissatisfaction with capitalism in general and its simple inability to provide the basic conditions for development.
Therefore, the assemblies represent the will of the masses to participate in political decisions and politics in general. The will of the masses can only be realised when the assemblies become the de facto government in Serbia. These assemblies – to the degree that they involve the mass of the working class, and coordinate and centralise in councils of delegates – are essentially soviets in embryonic form, similar to those which emerged during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia. The movement can fight for much more than justice for the victims of the Novi Sad canopy collapse. The strength of the working class can not only overthrow Vučić, but can also win massive, decisive victories.
To strengthen the power of the assemblies, we must:
- Make the zbor the main tool of struggle. Unite students and workers to organise a general strike.
- Establish more workers’ assemblies! Workers must form their own mass assemblies in their workplaces, coordinating them by sector, following the example of workers in IT, education, and healthcare.
Why?
Because the strongest weapon against the state is a strike.
Workers must establish their own strike committees – and the assembly is the tool to do that! Just as the education workers have already shown.
Centralise the assemblies!
Create a central assembly – a Zbor svih zborova – on a national level, to which delegates from assemblies across Serbia (representatives of workers’ and people’s assemblies) will be sent, as well as delegates from student plenums.
Our goal must be the better coordination of actions and the establishment of strike and blockade committees.
Organise self-defense under the control of the assemblies.
Students are blockading universities. Workers should occupy workplaces.
Forward to the revolutionary strike in Serbia!
