Serbia’s political system remains in its deepest crisis ever. Mass protesters and the country’s government struggle for control over public space and the future of Serbia, as this series of reportages from Novi Sad and Beograd shows.

“Hvala ti, prijatelju”, I manage to say as a man passes Novi Sad’s train station and crosses himself. “Thank you, friend”.

Seven months ago, on November 1 2024 at 11:52 AM, the canopy of the station collapsed. Its debris killed 16 people. The youngest victim was eight years old.

Their names are Sara, Valentina, Đorđe, Milica, Nemanja, Anđela, Miloš, Stefan, Sanja, Goranka, Vukašin, Mileva, Đuro, Vasko, Anja and Vukašin.

The station had just been freshly renovated and been reopened twice in the preceding months.

I am an atheist. Religions gestures are alien to me. As I take a closer look at the withering flowers and the toys locals placed here to honor the victims, I feel tears running down my cheek.

The stranger who is just passing by is obviously religious. He pays his respect in his own way. In this situation, this makes him a friend.

Some other people who pass by here on their way from the city to the bus station or vice versa pause. Another elderly woman crosses herself in the Christian Orthodox fashion.

The Wound That Hasn’t Healed

The wound this catastrophe caused has not healed. Not even after seven months.

The mass protests that have erupted all over the country have something to do with it. They addressed and address what caused the collapse of the canopy: Neglicience and corruption.

How the government dealt with it, is another reason this wound hasn’t healed.

At first, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić publicly stated that while the entire train station of Novi Sad had been renovated, the canopy had somehow not been. Critics claim that to date, the government has not released full documentation of the construction works carried out on the station. Companies with close ties to Serbia’s ruling party SNS were involved.

The station also remains closed seven months after the accident. No comprehensive survey has been carried out on structural issues. No one wants to sign off on the building’s safety.

And the collapse of the canopy itself has burst the bubble for many people that while they may live in a state they consider corrupt, there would at least be a modicum of reliability and safety. “I am going to Beograd by train tomorrow”, Leka says. He’s an old friend from Novi Sad. “I don’t feel safe, to be honest.”

This is a line one hears from many people these days, in Novi Sad and in Beograd, and from other places. If the canopy of a freshly renovated train station can collapse, what’s next?

In April, a ceiling in a freshly renovated school near Kragujevac crashed into a classroom. It was during the Easter holidays. No children were inside the building.

The Struggle Who Dominates Public Space

Ever since the accident of Novi Sad, mass protests led by university and college students have dominated political life and public space in Serbia. People took and still take to the streets, even in small towns and villages. Not as often as they did in the previous months, but still.

“We still have major protests every week here in Novi Sad”, Leka tells me. Plus, there is daily vigils for the dead from November 1^st, where students block road crossings for 16 minutes of silence. One minute for every victim.

The signs of the protests are all over the place. Stickers, graffiti, murals, what have you.

It also shows that government supporters and protesters struggle for domination of public space.

Many slogans or other protests signs have been washed off. Such as here on Trg Slobode in the very center of Novi Sad. The fence around the years old construction site for an underground parking lot had been painted red.

There are countless stickers who have been put up on walls, kiosks, buildings, and which have been partly been torn off.

This goes for posters as well. Although in some cases it isn’t clear if posters were torn off by government supporters or fell victim to a city policy against illegal posters.

Dustbins have been adorned with slogans directed against SNS.

For every local, the message on this bus stop on Bulevard Mihajla Pupina is clear. 16, the number of the dead from Novi Sad.

And of course, there is the red hands. They have become the trademark of the mass protests. They stand for the blood the hundreds of thousands of protesters say the government has on its hand.

Do these many signs say that the protest movement is still strong or are they merely memories of a failed revolution?

Pressure On The Protesters

This bar in the city center collects donations for the students and the university staff. Students all over the country have been blockading their faculties ever since the protests started, effectively crippling the higher education system of Serbia. Professors and university staff publicly support their students.

The government has put pressure on them to end these strikes. Subsidies for students have been cancelled. Teaching staff on universities have not been paid in months.

“My wife teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts”, Igor says. He is also a local friend. “She has not received any money in four months. I’m just a freelancer, and my income has dried up for other reasons. We’re still not in serious financial trouble, but we’ll have to worry about our situation pretty soon”.

This was supposed to put pressure on university staff in order to divide the students and their supporters. So far, it hasn’t worked.

His financial situation is not Igor’s only worry. He has actively supported the protests. “I’ve been on countless rallies and blockades, including here on February the 1^st and in Beograd on March 15^th. And now, seven months on, the government is still in power. If this was a revolution, it has failed”, he says.

The Pessimism Of The Old Generation

Like Igor, Ivan is a veteran of what one can call the extraparliamentary opposition in Serbia. He is vocal in his rejection of the nationalist consensus in Serbian politics and of everday corruption in the country – since long before Aleksandar Vučić and his party SNS came to power 13 years ago, and have since perfected the system of clientelism in Serbia.

Ivan, too, is losing patience. “Nothing has changed. It’s so typical here”, he says. Ivan partly blames the students for this. Their discipline and remarkable organization has kept the protest movement non-violent from their side. For Ivan, this may have been to tame. “They have lost their momentum”. According to him, there is so much anger in Serbian society about the government that the regime could have easily been overthrown with more decisive action.

He seriously thinks about emigrating to a Western country in a few months. “I have dual citizenship, and if nothing changes, I am out of here”.

Ivan is not the only one who struggles with the explicit non violence of the Serbian revolution. Later conversations in Beograd will show that.

“Now, summer will come, and what’s left of the protests will probably vanish, because people will want their summer vacation instead of keeping the protests going”, he says, and does not hide his disappointment.

Vučić, Ivan says, has probably successfully sat it out and can remain in power with things largely unchanged. Igor agrees with this assessment.

Many of the older supporters of the protest movement see it this way. Many of them have been active in protests for decades and seen momentum after momentum fade away, not just under Vučić. The students’ protests had gotten them out of their prior resignation and instilled them with hope. This seems to be gone for many, and this makes their disappointment all the more bitter and their assessments more pessimistic.

“We Are Not Giving Up Now”

In the courtyard of Hotel Vojvodine a DJ is holding an open air concert on a Saturday night in early June.

Many of the young concertgoers sport buttons that support the students’ movements. Most of them are students or freshly out of college.

All of a sudden, the crowd starts cheering “Pumpaj, pumpaj!”, the more or less official slogan of the protests. And then: “Ko ne skače, taj je ćaci“. „He who doesn’t jump is a ćaci”.

Ćaci is a derogatory, if self-chosen, term for counter protesters who support the government. They have their own camp in Pionirksi Park in the very center of Beograd, protected by police. The chant “Ko ne skače, taj je ćaci“ has become a trademark of the anti government protests.

If this revolution is over, someone didn’t tell its chief activists.

“We will keep this going”, Lenka says. She’s in her early 20’s and works at one of the faculties who have been under blockade for seven months. During our conversation, it appears that to her the idea that these protests could fail seems as far away as the moon.

Her friend Dunja also appears optimistic about the prospects. As does another young concertgoer whose name I have no time to ask. “OK, it’s going a bit slower now. Summer is coming. But we have put so much effort into this, we are not going to give up now.”

Sara, a waitress in one of the bars of the city center, isn’t wavering in her support for the students. “I am still a student myself, so I know where my solidarity lies”, she says. “We have already achieved a lot, and we will keep putting pressure to the government”. She herself donates a lot of what she earns as a waitress to the students’ support funds.

The main thing, though, is to keep up the support of the older generation, the young activists and supporters say. “We can’t do this alone.” That may turn out be a problem.

The second part of this series of reportages will analyze the mood among protest supporters in Beograd. It will be published here in a few days.

Some of the names have been altered. In some cases, this is because my interview partners feared repercussions. In other cases, the remarks that were quoted were made in more private conversations. I decided not to leave them out as they contribute to an overall view of the mass protests in Serbia as seen by their supporters.

How to Support My Work

If you like this post, please share it on your social media or leave a comment. You can also subscribe to this blog and you can also support me on BuyMeACoffee.