Philippe Alcoy
Source link
Serbia’s student revolt movement, which started after the collapse of the Novi Sad train station canopy, which killed 15 people last November, is still in full swing. The demonstrations are becoming more and more massive, not only in big cities like Belgrade, Novi Sad or Niš, but also in medium-sized towns like Valjevo, Sombor or Zaječar, a sign that the mobilization is finding an echo not only in urban areas but also in rural areas.
Beyond the scandal of the Novi Sad accident, which triggered immense anger and indignation throughout society, the student revolt expresses something deeper: the contestation of a whole harmful legacy of privatizations, attacks on living conditions, and attacks against the rights of workers and the popular classes. These inequalities and injustices express the lack of a desirable future for the youth or for the rest of the most deprived sectors of Serbian society. This is why the students’ struggle has been met with great sympathy within Serbian society, from very diverse sectors, while opening a political and social crisis that could escape the hands of the government and threaten the profits of the capitalist class. Many speak of a struggle for “a more just society.” That’s quite a program.
A Day of (Almost) General Strike
On Friday, January 24, at the call of mobilized students, a strike movement began in the country. Even if this mobilization took more of a form of “civil disobedience,” it was a first step in the direction of trying to trigger a general strike. Thus, alongside the students, lawyers and professors already on strike, workers in the cultural and health sectors joined the struggle. Cinema workers also joined the strike, including those from one of the largest cinema chains in the country that did not open their doors, not only in the big cities but also in smaller towns . Theaters, bookstores, cafes and restaurants also declared themselves “on strike” throughout the day on the 24th (among these sectors it was the bosses who called for support for the movement, which poses some important contradictions), as did the workers of RTS, the public channel that serves the government’s propaganda.
On Monday, January 27, students once again made a huge show of force by blocking the “Autokomanda” road junction, one of the most important in the capital. In a friendly and warm spirit, the students decided to stay there all night from Monday to Tuesday. A logistics of water and food supplies was set up to supply the students with the help of workers who joined the blockade after work. This is a demonstration of the great solidarity surrounding the movement but also of the forms of self-organization that are developing there.
The mobilized students denounced the privatization of higher education through increases in registration fees but also the pressures and anxiety that this situation generates for them in relation to their precarity in general. This issue is particularly sensitive among university teachers but also primary and secondary school teachers. Thus, on Saturday, January 18, 4,000 of them joined the movement, and more than half of the schools in the country went on strike in support of the mobilized students. The government is aware of the potential of the alliance between students and teachers and acted quickly by offering salary increases, which some unions accepted, to nip the teachers’ mobilization in the bud.
But as the protests spread across the country, the mobilized students increasingly face various threats, from hooded men armed with knives to repressive forces who do not hesitate to approach, question, beat and arrest students. For example, the Faculty of Drama in Belgrade was attacked by an organized group during the commemoration of the victims of the collapse. However, even if the government represses the protesters on a daily basis, for the time being the level of repression has remained relatively moderate because Vučić knows that too much repression could radicalize the movement and hasten the end of his government.
We can therefore see that the movement is supported by very diverse sectors of society. The strike on January 24 demonstrated that the urban sectors of culture and more broadly small businesses or small shops, are also affected by the mobilization and are joining the students. However, despite the multiple calls and actions of students towards the workers’ movement, the majority of the latter has not actively taken part in the movement, or even remains passive. The main trade union centers remain very linked to the state and to the different governments in power, which further complicates the direct and organized participation of the working class.
However, some sectors at the forefront – such as energy workers who are demanding that the students’ demands be met while also carrying their own demands – went on strike on January 24 and demonstrated. This week, it was the union of the Zastava company, in the important arms sector, that expressed solidarity with the students’ struggle for a “more just society.”
From this point of view, we can say that the Serbian student movement is gradually trying to recover its tradition of unity with the workers’ movement. Building such an alliance would be profoundly progressive and would be a nightmare for the government and the employers. But it would also be a way to snatch a victory over Vučić and to limit the influence of sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, small employers, and liberal opposition parties.
The Government in Turmoil
Faced with the massiveness of the demonstrations, President Vučić announced the organization of a “counter-meeting” on the same day of the strike in the city of Jagodina, in the very center of the country. In this attempt to impose a balance of power in the face of the demonstrations, Vučić’s party organized shuttle buses from all over the country in order to transport as many people as possible to the meeting site, to demonstrate that the president still enjoys the support of the population. In his speech at the meeting, Vučić once again attacked the students and, more broadly, all the mobilized sectors, stating that “Serbia is under attack from within and from without.”
Before this meeting, the president had already proposed the holding of a referendum in a televised address to decide whether he should remain in power or be dismissed. But such a referendum cannot be organised by the president himself: it is up to the deputies to collect at least 67 signatures to request the holding of a consultative referendum. This is an attempt by the government to channel the movement into the ballot boxes, which reveals the concern of the Serbian leaders in the face of the scale of the movement.
On Tuesday, January 28, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned in order, in his words, to ” avoid new complications and not to further increase tensions in society. “ The mayor of the city of Novi Sad also resigned from his position in the face of pressure from the street, stating that ” stability and easing of tensions and stopping new divisions in society are the essential condition for the progress and development of Novi Sad and the improvement of the lives of new citizens. “
The fact that politicians directly involved in the Novi Sad tragedy have resigned represents an admission of weakness by the government, which will not please the protest movement. The mayor of Novi Sad and the prime minister will be quickly replaced by equally corrupt politicians who will continue the neoliberal policies of the last thirty years. The current mobilization has not emerged just to make heads roll, but as a consequence and a response to a whole system of exploitation and misery that has been established in the country since the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
A New Generation of Rebels
The youth mobilized today in Serbia have known only the triumphant and most aggressive capitalism after the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in the last decade of the 20th century. Many are the children of the generations that revolted against the regime of former President Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s in a context of economic and social crisis but also with the direct interference of the imperialist powers. The revolt is therefore part of the recent history of Serbia and in the continuity of the struggle of previous generations.
The reasons for the mobilization go far beyond the Novi Sad accident. They reflect the social and economic consequences of several decades of capitalist restoration, privatizations, and corruption that have favored a small minority of ultra-rich capitalists. A system that, moreover, destroys the environment and, in a context of nationalist tensions, constantly threatens to plunge the region into reactionary wars again.
From this point of view, the movement’s demands remain very disparate and unclear, expressing a form of difficulty in providing substantive, structural responses for the moment. If the movement has structured itself around assemblies in universities, it does not seem to have given itself a clear political direction, independent of the capitalist political parties, and responding to the democratically organized base in order to put forward demands that attack the heart of the system and lay the foundations for forging an alliance with the workers and the most exploited sectors of society. It is between these cracks that the bourgeois opposition parties are trying to put forward their own agenda by demanding the establishment of a transitional government and the organization of new elections.
The students’ struggle is heroic, but to put an end to the structural ills of the regime, it must be broadened politically, socially and numerically. Social demands such as wage increases or the fight for free university for all are fundamental to co-opt a whole precarious sector of youth who do not have access to university and who find themselves in the electoral base of Vučić and the extreme right. Other demands such as the cancellation of ecocidal contracts and submission to imperialist interests – like the contract for the exploitation of a lithium mine in the Jadar Valley that recently mobilized thousands of people – could also link all these mobilizations to the global policies of the government, the Serbian capitalist class, and their imperialist allies. In this sense, the entry on the scene of the working class allied to the student movement would be fundamental and would constitute an explosive element that could give great hope to all the exploited and oppressed in the region and the continent.
First published in French on January 29 in Révolution Permanente.
Translation by Maryam Alaniz
Originally Published: 2025-02-04 14:18:00
Source link