Serbia: Vučić threatens repression in face of mass defiance

The magnitude and intensity of the mass movement could escalate further should Vučić attempt to resort to repression.

  • Francesco Merli
  • Thu, Jul 10, 2025
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Image: Mašina

Saturday 28 June marked a new attempt by the masses to impose a solution to their eight-month-long confrontation with President Aleksandar Vučić. A mass demonstration of 150,000 people swept Belgrade. Chants of “Uhapsite Vučića!” (“Arrest Vučić!”) reverberated across streets and squares. Demands for early elections were also forcibly put forward. The struggle has been ongoing continuously since the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on 1 November, which killed 16 people, and which exposed the systemic failure and corruption of the regime.

The demand for those responsible to be held to account for the tragedy at the heart of this movement has been constantly dismissed by Vučić. It is clear that even such a basic demand cannot be met by the regime. For some time, it has also become increasingly clear to a large layer of Serbian society that, as long as Vučić is in place, those responsible for this crime, or any of the multiple corruption scandals that have indelibly marred the regime, will never be held to account.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the students decided that enough was enough and occupied their university faculties. Since then, they have organised their struggle through democratic mass student assemblies called plenums, a tradition stemming from previous student struggles. These have been the backbone of the movement ever since, bravely resisting all pressure and threats, and mobilising mass popular support around them.

For eight months, faculty occupations, demonstrations, roadblocks and thousands of protests throughout the country have remained peaceful despite the calculated provocations of the regime. This includes the reckless use of a sound cannon against hundreds of thousands of people at the massive demonstration on 15 March in Belgrade. The panic stampede provoked by the impact of the sound weapon could have caused many casualties. Several demonstrators were injured, but the consequences could have been much worse.

However, on Saturday, fighting broke out, resulting in the arrest of dozens of demonstrators by police and security forces. The next day, Vučić, in his typical, threatening style, declared that there would be “no pardons” for anti-government activists.

“You cannot defeat Serbia with violence, Serbia has not stopped, nor will it stop,” Vučić told a press conference, turning his party’s slogan – “Serbia must not stop,” – into a mantra. As usual, Vučić equated himself to the nation, and not so subtly implied that the movement against his rule is ‘anti-Serbian’. He promised more arrests and brushed away calls for early elections. He also accused the protesters of making “a direct call for civil conflicts and attacks on the police”.

Incidentally, this comment confirms the extent to which the regime has been undermined by months of mass action. This has not just been limited to massive demonstrations such as the one on Saturday, or the even bigger demonstration on 15 March. There have been thousands of mass actions throughout the country.

The student’s appeals to expand the protest beyond its initial student base have clearly advanced the consciousness of more than a million people, who have taken an active part in the protests, as well as the many more who have supported them over the past months.

The role of the working class

The students have clearly understood that the regime can only be brought down by a full mobilisation of the working class. For this reason, for more than six months, they have issued appeals to the trade union leaders to call a general strike. These appeals have resonated with layers of the working class that have joined the movement, but so far they have fallen on the deaf ears of the trade union leaders.

On 22 March, the students organised a meeting pulling together the leaders of the different trade union confederations to discuss joint action against the labour law, and succeeded in organising joint demonstrations on May Day.

However, the students have correctly refused to limit themselves to openly engaging with the trade union leaders. At the beginning of March, they issued a broad appeal for the formation of mass citizens’ assemblies in the neighbourhoods, called ‘zborovi’ (plural of ‘zbor’, meaning ‘assembly’).

Since then, in an upsurge of activity by the masses since the huge demonstration on 15 March, zborovi have been mushrooming in their hundreds across the whole country. The students also appealed for workers’ zborovi to be established in all workplaces. Should they generalise, it would mean a fuller involvement of the working class as a class in the movement, which would be decisive for its victory. 

The students have clearly understood that the regime can only be brought down by a full mobilisation of the working class / Image: Mašina

The zborovi are organs through which the masses are organising themselves. Should the mass movement escalate, it will most likely express itself through an even bigger wave of participation in the zborovi, and enhanced attempts at centralising and coordinating them. In other words, the degree to which the zborovi are expanding and coordinating at a local and national level is an indication of the depth of the revolutionary crisis developing in society. 

The magnitude and intensity of the mass movement could escalate further should Vučić attempt to resort to repression. As Marx explained, a revolution needs from time to time the whip of the counter-revolution to move forward. This may well be the case in relation to Serbia.

A miscalculation by the regime, like a botched attempt at clamping down on the protests or ending the students’ occupations, could ignite the revolutionary anger and frustration into a full-blown revolution against the regime. That is why, so far, despite all of the huffing and puffing by Vučić, the regime has been extremely careful not to use naked state repression to suppress the movement. This may also be the result of internal divisions in the ruling class over how to deal with the crisis they are facing. 

On the other side, the defiant mood on the road blockades that started on Sunday and intensified on Monday after the arrest of several students, indicate that the movement is far from having burnt through all of its energy. A dozen blockades were thrown up in Belgrade, with the main one in Zemun being targeted by the security forces with arrests. Several others were thrown up in Novi Sad and in Kragujevac, and spread from there to the rest of the country.

The footage of road blockades being set up in Kragujevac shows the mass character of these actions and the confidence of the protestors. We have received reports that the government took measures to remove containers and fences from the roads, and so protesters have resorted to blocking the roads with their own bodies.

When the police intervene to disperse a blockade, people simply move further down the pavement, wait for the police to leave, and then set up another one. All this shows that ordinary people have lost their fear of the authorities and are not scared by the regime’s threats.

Is Vučić preparing for a showdown?

Vučić’s threats are not new and have already served to radicalise the protests. However, it is clear that the regime is becoming increasingly restless, and that Vučić is banking on tiredness and frustration growing among the most advanced layers, who have been at the forefront of the protests for eight months. He is testing the ground for a possible showdown, seeking an opportunity to inflict a decisive blow and to demoralise the masses into passivity.

One of the most remarkable features of this mass movement is that it has lasted for so long. For the students and the workers that are mobilising, it has become clear that the struggle to bring down the regime, which has consolidated its grip on power for more than a decade, requires a movement that can hold out for a minute longer than the regime.

The regime has developed a number of tactics to conjure up provocations. One such tactic has been the establishment of police-protected, pro-Vučić camps, such as the one near the National Assembly building. It has been the source of continuous attacks and provocations in the run-up to big demonstrations. For example, these camps of provocateurs were used by the regime to disrupt preparations for the massive 15 March demonstration. This clearly failed. 

This time, the students issued an ultimatum to the camp to disband by 9pm on Saturday. This was ignored, leading to a sizable contingent of protesters attempting to clear the camp and clashing with the police.

This has been hypocritically seized upon by the international media as a way to cast a sinister shadow on the movement as being ‘violent’. Of course, they do not apply the same measure to the pro-Vučić thugs assembled in the camp, or to the security forces protecting them.

Incidentally, the remarkable movement that has developed over the last eight months has largely been ignored by the European and international mass media until now. One would think that European media would pay attention to what is happening in Serbia after months of massive mobilisation. Instead, however, we have observed a conspicuous silence. At best, we get emasculated, routine news agency reports, devoid of any detail. It is as if they believe this movement can be ignored out of existence. The attitude of the so-called ‘free press’ reflects the fear of revolution that pervades the European ruling classes.

The violent tactics applied by the regime show the need to systematically organise self-defence organs of the movement under the control of the zborovi and the other mass organisations through which the movement is organised. Such organs of self-defence are already present and are well organised, having arisen out of the need to protect the road blocks, occupations and demonstrations against provocateurs and violent attacks. In most cases, these self-defence units are organised by students, with advice from veterans of the Serbian army who are supporting the movement, as well as other supporters,  including bikers.

Ever since the protests started eight months ago, Vučić has constantly attempted to undermine them by unleashing a massive media campaign to criminalise the students and anyone who supports them. This has been mostly intended to galvanise and mobilise his own supporters. He argued without a shred of evidence that unspecified foreign powers were behind the protests, and that they were aiming to provoke a ‘colour revolution’. Which ‘powers’ are hiding behind this plot is difficult to conceive, given that the regime is supported by the European Union, the United States, and even by Russia and China.

This provocative campaign has led to several violent attacks on the movement. On 16 January, a driver – possibly a Vučić supporter or someone affected by the hate campaign waged against the protests – ploughed their car through a road blockade, severely injuring a female student. That episode led to an explosion of outrage, which Vučić attempted to defuse by pushing for the prime minister’s resignation. It is also an indication of the fragile foundations upon which the regime is based.

What way forward?

The students are calling for early elections and have announced that they will endorse a list of candidates. This demand has now gained mass support. The main reason that the demand for early election has gained broad support is that, eight months into the movement, there appears to be no solution to break the deadlock of forces. The mass mistrust towards both the government and the official parliamentary opposition is evidenced by the attitude taken by the masses in pushing opposition politicians onto the side of the movement.

However, it is clear that the regime has no intention of conceding elections which they are not convinced they can win. The only way to force them to concede on this, as with all the other demands, is to escalate the movement, generalise the zborovi to all neighbourhoods and workplaces, and to coordinate and centralise them. Only in this way will it be possible to use the full strength of the working class to bring down the regime. Vučić must go, and the Serbian Progressive Party’s regime with him.

Eight months of mobilisation have shown beyond any doubt that the workers and youth of Serbia have conquered the right to choose their own destiny. It is not just a president or a prime minister that have to be changed. The whole rotten system that created and nurtured Vučić and his cronies must be overthrown along with them.

As communists, we support the right of all peoples to democratically decide their own destiny. In order to do this, they must establish control over the banks, the financial system, the mining companies and the monopolies, whether they are owned by Serbian or foreign capitalists. This cannot be achieved unless the looters of the wealth of the whole nation are expropriated and the main levers of the economy are placed under the democratic control and management of the working class, and production planned to fulfill the needs of the vast majority.