On 25 October, the student movement and its electoral list swept the ruling regime from power in Serbia, securing a decisive victory despite widespread electoral manipulation. Voter turnout reached an impressive 70%, despite a falsified voter register that had been used to distort the electoral process. The Student List won 140 of 250 parliamentary seats. Apart from the Serbian Progressive Party and national minority lists, no other list crossed the electoral threshold. Although analysts, experts and opinion polls had recognized the students’ strength and possible advantage, few anticipated a victory of this scale.
So, what happened? How did a movement that emerged in response to the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on 1 November 2024, when 16 people were killed, grow from faculty blockades and demands for accountability into a broad social force capable of bringing about such profound political change? The process will certainly be analysed in the future, but we can already reflect on some of its main characteristics, drawing on our own experience of almost two years of struggle. We are not writing as neutral analysts or experts but as participants, activists, artists, cultural workers and scholars who took an active part in the process. We see this as an opportunity to reflect on our lived experience, and to articulate and share the knowledge we have generated through practice.
Organizing from below
On election day, more than 80,000 citizens across Serbia volunteered in election monitoring, coordination and logistics: including observers, polling-station committee members, mobile teams, drivers, operators, food providers and polling-station coordinators. Their involvement was preceded by training and preparation for different scenarios, including procedures for responding to electoral fraud such as carousel voting (Bugarski voz), phantom voters, parallel voter lists and forged identity cards, as well as intimidation and possible violence by police or groups coerced or paid by the regime. After repeated attacks on students and citizens during the protests, the threat of potential violence on election day was taken seriously. The scale and complexity of this undertaking demonstrate the extensive organizational infrastructure built within the student movement and its broader social base through its own resources and self-organization.
The student protests awakened a sense of hope that moved many citizens deeply and drew them into collective action. As the protests continued, however, given their shifts in intensity, they often seemed excessively drawn out and frustrating to many who had joined them. Yet the student movement benefited from this slow-burning process, setting in motion social developments that take time and resist the logic of immediate political efficiency and quick results. What sometimes felt like a waste of time and energy, an investment without an obvious outcome, was in fact building the invisible ties and relationships on which a new form of self-organization depended.
For broad sections of the population, this period became an opportunity to inform themselves about democracy and political subjectivization. People learned about laws and rights, gained experience in collective decision-making and developed a sense of shared responsibility. It was also time for people to overcome years of social isolation, rebuild mutual trust and experience their own capacity for social change. Neither electoral victory nor taking power was the goal of this process. Rather, it sought a systemic transformation, recognizing that, under existing conditions, any new government would be absorbed by the mechanisms of the system.
The path towards this transformation is embodied in the movement’s plenary structures and direct-democratic decision-making – the fact that the Student List has no single leader and its representatives have been rotating in public appearances. Faculty plenums, as spaces for practising direct democracy, discussing a wide range of issues and making collective decisions, have empowered students to engage in different forms of representation, and develop practices of mutual responsibility and accountability. This new logic of collective participation in governance challenged the prior institutional order built on hierarchy and representation. It became clear that the next step in the long process of institutional transformation was to foster the capacity of a broad social base to self-organize and build independent platforms, associations and networks in which direct-democratic principles could be put into practice across different sectors of society.
To encourage wider social mobilization, students called on citizens across Serbia to organize locally through citizens’ assemblies, and on workers to establish plenums in their workplaces, offering support and guidance in these processes of self-organization. Citizens and workers began taking initiative in their own communities and sectors, connecting specific problems to the broader collective struggle, adapting the plenary model to different circumstances and building new coordination structures. Through such initiatives and that of ‘A Student in Every Village’, which provided support for communities outside urban centres, the movement reached different parts of society across geographical, class and generational divides. Particularly moving were the encounters with elderly residents of the most remote villages, where almost no young people remained – most had left because these places had nothing to offer them. No one had ever asked these people what they thought. They knew the politicians on whom their everyday lives depended only from television. Now students were arriving to talk to them, listen to them and document their problems, bringing joy to their hearts.
Infrastructures of care
The emotional cohesion of the student movement has been crucial to sustaining collective action despite inner ideological and strategic heterogeneity. According to Ildiko Erdei, care, seen as a political force, was the core of their social mobilization. The student struggle in Serbia constituted its own language, communication channels and infrastructures. The protest soundtrack, videos and social media posts, the iconography and visual language of the movement, student magazines and fanzines, graffiti and stickers, and, particularly, the practice of collective walking can be read as technologies through which affective solidarity became politically operative. The movement’s new language circulated primarily through digital networks, especially student plenary Instagram accounts, producing what Manuel Castells describes as ‘networked resistance’. These cultural and communicative networks activated forms of social and symbolic capital that extended beyond conventional repertoires of political mobilization. The speed of creative response was particularly important: memes, images, slogans, performances, videos and other forms of cultural production circulate rapidly, become viral, strengthen solidarity, while pre-empting or exposing the regime’s violence.
Through meetings, debates, marches and collective actions, new spaces for social interaction and relations emerged in a growing network across the country. In a society deeply scarred by fragmentation, poverty, unemployment, coercion and humiliation as a consequence of successive privatizations since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, these spaces enabled people to rebuild mutual trust. Inspired by the students’ persistence and enthusiasm, citizens created their own symbols, slogans, banners, coats of arms and flags, devised campaigns and social-media messages, organized public discussions, reading groups and bazaars, and started publishing their own photocopied zines. Through these activities, local community cultures began to take shape, grounded in solidarity, collective action and care.
The student marches and bicycle tours were particularly important in extending these relationships. Some of these journeys involved covering hundreds of kilometres, connecting places and communities across Serbia and beyond. By moving collectively across cities, borders and territories, the movement produced new relations between bodies, space and political power. This non-utilitarian action,, shaping a new landscape of the culture of resistance in Serbia, turned active solidarity into new social infrastructure. Maintaining this new infrastructure required an everyday investment of often invisible labour. It also brought in new people and extended shared responsibility.
Support for student marches was strong and diverse across the country. Residents of places through which students travelled organized assistance such as welcome committees, food, accommodation and transport. As in every national liberation struggle, people gave what they had at their disposal, activating different resources: financial, psychological, emotional and professional. The walks and bike tours led to the voluntary activation of resources and care infrastructures that sustained the students through crises. Solidarity, empathy, care, hope, knowledge and commitment became resources through which social mobilization was sustained and reproduced.
The challenges of systematic change
The struggle’s long-term ambitions were also reflected in the student-devised formation of the Social Front, bringing together rebellious workers’ collectives, professional communities and trade unions from different sectors. Its aim was to connect their struggles and enable workers, through direct-democratic decision-making, to articulate common demands for improving working conditions and transforming public services, and to serve as a mechanism for holding any future government accountable. Drafting Programme Minimum was one of the Social Front’s main tasks. Conceived as one of the founding documents of the student movement’s political programme, it brought together proposals from different fields, from legislative amendments to changes in institutional governance, and articulated core commitments to workers’ rights, education, healthcare and culture as public goods, the protection of natural resources, and national integrity.
However, compared with the extensive civic mobilization through local assemblies, the Social Front developed slower and failed to achieve some of its most ambitious goals, including a general strike. Cooperation with representative trade unions on jointly drafting amendments to the Labour Law and the Law on Strikes took considerable time and was difficult to establish. This experience revealed the depth of systemic problems in the field of labour and the amount of work still needed to create the conditions for an effective workers’ struggle.
These difficulties point precisely to the economic conditions that negatively shape the collective organization of workers – conditions that cannot be overcome simply by a change of government. In this light, the electoral victory was conceived as just one of the necessary milestones in a far more demanding struggle that lies ahead: confronting not only corruption and nepotism but also fundamentally transforming the system that produced them.
The scale of this undertaking and its challenges become clearer when we consider the broader geopolitical context of Serbia as a country of peripheral capitalism, in a state of complete economic and, therefore, political dependence on the countries of the capitalist centre. The Serbian economy is entirely reliant on foreign investment and concessions, building its competitiveness on the international market through the exploitation of its natural resources and labour force. All this poses a highly complex challenge for the future leadership, one that demands innovative solutions for reviving the domestic economy while ensuring decent working conditions, social protection, and the conditions for social development through education and culture.
From plenums to the electoral list
Following the mass protest on 15 March 2025, it became increasingly clear that existing institutions were not responding to the movement’s demands. This shifted the strategy of the movement toward calling for early parliamentary elections which gave the struggle a new direction. More than 80 faculty plenums initiated an extensive deliberative process to form the Student List, comprising 250 selected parliamentary candidates drawn from a broad ideological spectrum, with a particularly strong presence of intellectuals and members of the academic community. Importantly, the students themselves did not stand as candidates; instead, they selected people they could trust to represent the movement and its demands.
Alongside the formation of the Student List, the task of developing detailed programmes for different areas of social life was entrusted to newly established groups of collaborators. Drawing on Programme Minimum, thematic working groups, bringing together students and hundreds of experts from different fields, drafted twenty comprehensive programmes. Covering the economy, industry, healthcare, domestic and foreign policy, education, culture, housing, environmental protection and the judiciary, among other areas, they identify the most pressing problems facing Serbia and propose measures to address them in the short, medium and long term. This participatory process mobilized a broad network of professionals, who contributed their time and expertise for almost a year to the programme of the Student List. It was presented to voters in a summarized form of eleven points, and through thematic leaflets and panel discussions throughout the country.
The novelty of this student movement was not only its leaderless horizontal structure but also its deliberate restraint in explicitly articulating an ideological position. Particularly during the first months of the protests, it drew impressive numbers of citizen supporters by deliberately excluding party and political symbols, as well as political speeches. Many were quick to read this as a populist, catch-all strategy aimed at appealing to the broadest possible constituency by downplaying ideological differences and avoiding explicit political positioning.
By refusing to fall into the trap of ideological divisions and labelling, instrumentalized for political purposes for decades and often taking an almost folkloric character (left-wingers versus right-wingers, pro-Russian versus pro-EU, nationalists versus globalists, and so on), the students avoided artificial divisions that political elites had exploited to the detriment of society as a whole. The selection of candidates for the Student List remained ideologically heterogeneous, bringing together people from diverse ideological positions. The students also chose to postpone open debate on foreign policy, recognizing its proven potential for social polarization. They considered that such a debate should take place only when the structural conditions for informed and genuinely democratic public discussion are in place, including free media, open public forums and spaces for the exchange of diverse perspectives.
Interregnum
At the time of writing, Serbia is in the transitional period between the Student List’s electoral victory and the constitution of new governing bodies. Following the proclamation of the final election results, the new parliament must be constituted within 30 days, and a further period of up to 90 days is allowed for forming a government. The transfer of power may therefore legally take up to 120 days. This interim period, an interregnum, creates opportunities for malpractice in the absence of an established executive authority, including the concealment of evidence and the destruction of documents, practices in which the outgoing government is already widely reported to be engaging. Preserving public records and scrutinizing the actions of outgoing officials are therefore immediate priorities.
The movement’s extensive grassroots base meanwhile launched spontaneous actions on the very first morning after the election. These included reclaiming Pionirski Park (Pioneer Park), a central green space in front of the Serbian Presidency that had been fenced off for a year and a half and occupied by a camp colloquially known as Ćaciland. Established in March 2025 and officially presented as a gathering of students opposed to the university blockades, the camp became a stronghold for government supporters, including members of far-right groups and individuals with criminal records. After the election, citizens cleared and cleaned the park, restored its green spaces and reopened it to the public. Symbolically the first media conference of the Student List took place on 29 October at this very location. Other initiatives included removing fences from green spaces earmarked for privatization and cleaning regime-sponsored graffiti from building façades. At the same time, collectives within public institutions, informal professional associations and combative trade unions began demanding the resignation of officials appointed by the former ruling party.
Institutional responses also began during this transitional period. The Supreme Public Prosecutor ordered a review of prosecution case files and urgent measures to prevent the destruction of official records in state institutions, banks and security agencies. Among dozens of cases, the National Bank of Serbia revoked Alta Bank’s operating licence, citing its deteriorating financial condition and risks to depositors.
Events are unfolding so rapidly that the situation will no doubt have changed by the time this article is published. One thing is certain: the regime has fallen, but our struggle has only just begun.
What comes next?
The process of ideological articulation of the student movement, including the Student List, remains a work in progress. So far, the movement’s ideological orientation can be discerned more clearly in its ways of organizing and acting than in the narrative through which it presents itself. For the time being, this is what matters most.
The movement has already built a powerful informal social base that has demonstrated its capacity to defeat the ruling regime and to gain legitimacy through the Student List. More importantly, it has created an open and flexible infrastructure in which everyone can find their place and feel included, respected and useful to the common good. In doing so, the student movement in Serbia has played a pioneering role in the broader democratization of governance, empowering citizens to take an active part in the decisions that shape their lives.
The success of this undertaking within Serbia will ultimately depend on the movement’s capacity to establish new institutional channels connecting direct democracy at the grassroots with representative democracy within the state, enabling genuine participation in governing the country and shaping new social relations. Serbia is not alone in this search. Student movements in France, Spain, Brazil, Italy and India, and in the wider Balkan region, including Romania, Greece and Albania, raise the question of how collective organizing and transforming political institutions could extend beyond the Serbian experience.
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
