Not long after the plenaries became a vital and decisive form of gathering among the students in Serbia, the practices of direct-democracy have spread beyond the universities and the discursive centres. Before we knew it, neighborhoods were organizing their own councils (Serbo-Croatian – zborovi), smaller villages across Serbia were having their own assemblies, along with worker unions and many other collective bodies, forming new kinds of alliances and constituencies. In the wake of such practices, it is impossible not to take into account the historical perspective and look back on the Yugoslav model of self-management, a structure of “imposed” citizen and worker participation in decision making, cultivated as part of the social fabric, promising a form of municipalism. However, much of what these structures strived to had remained, for a lack of better words, unfulfilled. (I can picture my father rolling his eyes when I bring this topic up). Operating entirely on a bottom-up principle and defining the imagination of our collective futures, can recently revived self-management practices be informed by the historical perspective of these practices and turn into more than a form of protest?
Studenti u svakom selu initiative (A student in every village), www.instagram.com/studentusvakomselu.
ALLIANCES, ASSEMBLIES & AGENCY
The interconnectedness of the student demands and the workers’ struggle has been clear from the very beginning, with the first general strikes taking place on the 24th of January, articulated as a statement of solidarity and simultaneously pointing towards the broader implications of the student-led movement. Unsurprisingly, this alliance was targeted by the authorities, with various accounts of threats, salary reductions (or complete salary removal) and other forms of oppression, which have already been part of the lived reality of many workers.
Despite the general climate of uncertainty and fear, there has been an unprecedented revival of citizen participation, mobilization and insurgent practices of self-organizing on a large scale and across different communities. Neighborhoods, towns and villages have replicated the principles of direct democracy proposed by the students in the form of plenums, and formulated them into the form of local assemblies, i.e. “zborovi”. It is important to mention that this kind of organizing could only happen through the idea of shared and intersected struggle and resistance. The passing on of knowledge produced through the student plenaries is another important aspect, with student groups sharing manuals and instructions on how to assemble and carry out collective decision making processes, formulate different needs into a new kind of constituency and not let the momentum and the often antagonistic nature of assemblies slip into hostility. More recently, there have even been student delegates attending the decentralised local assemblies as mediators, showing yet again that the sense of shared struggle and solidarity is reciprocated.
Labour Day (1st of May) marked yet another important step in the movement, with protests being organized mainly by the workers unions (Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia), together with the students, proposing clearly formulated demands – changes to the law on labor and strike. Such actions are even more significant as a direct response to the situation of the last decades, in which workers have been alienated from their agency and in which any kind of participation, political engagement and unionization have become stigmatized and systemically negated. This dormant attitude towards the very idea of collective action has without a doubt been challenged. The rise of self-organized practices not only points towards distrust in political systems of representation which lead to complete alienation of citizens from decision making structures, but also provides an alternative structure to the one given. The current happenings do not explicitly refer to the historical background and Yugoslav self-management principles, nor can they be understood simply as a legacy. The systemic distancing from the socialist past has ensured the erasure and stigmatisation of forms of emancipation such as unionizing and self-governance, paving a smooth transition into the newly formed ordeal of neo liberal capitalism, built on the myth that the past structures have failed and pushed us to a point of no return. This ordeal, met with general passivity and decades long indifference towards political participation gives new meaning to what is happening, framing it as a clear expression of needs and solidarity that arose not because, but despite the general apathetic and disincentivized climate.
“Svi u plenume – totalna samouprava” (To the plenums – total self-governance), a commonly used slogan in the student-led protests.
PAST CONSTITUENCIES & NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SELF-GOVERNANCE
The relation of people in Serbia towards the Yugoslav model of self-governance is a polarizing one. On the one hand, there is a tendency to romanticize what was lost or in some way taken away. On the other hand, there is an aftertaste of something bitter, a failed promise of which we witnessed the decline, a kind of cynicism that paved the way towards complete restraint from engagement in any kind of decision-making and an overall fatalist view on the future. The workers’ self-management model in Yugoslavia played a vital role in the social fabric, reconfiguring the meaning and friction between public and common goods. Self-governing socialism was instituted in the ‘50s and became part of the constitution in ‘74. The social and economic model was proposed to reallocate the management of companies from the centralized socialist state to the workers, offering a new kind of social ownership and property relations. In practice, it was formulated through constituencies such as workers’ unions and councils, and direct democracy being implemented only on lower levels, where all workers were included in the decision making processes. Although subversive, this form of self-management was state-imposed and enforced, in contrast to today’s movement in Serbia.
Asking those who experienced these structures first hand to look back is not an easy task. My questions are, in most cases, met with a kind of disappointment hidden behind badly articulated and surprisingly peculiar points in which the system failed to deliver a utopian promise. Whether this aspect of the historical context with all of its paradoxes is directly contributing to the current rise in self-governance practices in Serbia is difficult to say, but it is clear that it is informing and reanimating our political imaginary more and more. If anything, the historical lense of workers’ self-governance is making the political realities we are fighting for more tangible. The clear need for a new kind of governance is manifested through bottom-up self-governing practices among not only workers, but also neighbors, citizens and students, with an entire generation becoming politicized through these “radical” formats and possibly inspired by the reappearing trans-generational memories.
Nevena Delić, 2025, “Dolje država – totalna samouprava” (Down with the state – total self-governance), seen in Zagreb, Croatia.
THE POLITICS OF PRESENCE – WHAT CONDITIONS POLITICAL AGENCY TODAY?
In the case of socialist workers self-management, the participation in the decision making processes was based on the relations of production, conditioned by one’s job, a place in the production chain. Political participation was always in need of a condition, a free pass, relying on an unspoken designator. Such designators can be citizenship, class, and even the less visible ones, such as the material prerequisite of property. In Hannah Arendt’s articulation of Athenian democracy and political freedom, participation in the public realm was granted through private property, not because property would grant a legal right, but because property would allow one to be independent from the realm of necessity. Therefore, ownership would entail political participation and structurally exclude those who do not own property from public life. The question remains: what is the designator for today’s forms of direct democracy? in Serbia is and – if there is none (or at least a less obvious one) – could this be a democratization of democracy?
This is the third text in the Unfolding Affects series by Skup Skupova on the student protests in Serbia and beyond. Find the previous texts here: https://networkcultures.org/tactical-media-room/category/skup-skupova-serbia.
References
Hannah Arendt (1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press
Judith Butler (2015). Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Harward University Press
Marijana Cvetković, Vida Knežević (2025). Mass Student Protests in Serbia: The possibility of different social relations. L’internationale contributions, https://internationaleonline.org/rs/contributions/mass-student-protests-in-serbia-the-possibility-of-different-social-relations/?language=changed
Yavor Tarinski (2025). Plenums in the post-Yugoslav space. Transnational Institute of Social Ecology, https://trise.org/2025/03/23/plenums-in-the-post-yugoslav-space/