The largest mass gathering in the history of Belgrade demystified the myth of the so-called critical mass, because it doesn’t have to mean anything in and of itself. Hence also the risk that euphoria will transform into apathy among those yearning for a coup
There should be no kind of underestimating of Vučić’s “silent majority”, but the phenomenon of mass participation is now also on the anti-Vučić side of Serbia. There were more people at the Belgrade protest rally of Saturday 15th March than there were on 5th October 2000, when the Slobodan Milošević regime was toppled, and there were also more than at Milošević’s Ušće rally of 19th November 1988, when he consolidated his power. In response to the call of the students, and prompted by the tragedy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad (which has left 16 dead and one seriously injured), manifold more people gathered than had done so for Vučić’s counter rally of 19th April 2019 in front of the Assembly in Belgrade.
There’s basically never been a bigger gathering than this in the history of Belgrade. There were approximately 450,000 citizens on the streets at certain points. Now some are wondering how it could be that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Belgrade and yet Vučić remains in power and just as cynical as before. Well, firstly the students demonstrated how realistic they are n stating on time that this won’t be the last rally in the process; that their goal isn’t a violent takeover of power, just as, on the flip side, students are unrealistic if they think they can simply repeat such a massive turnout. Secondly, Vučić himself stressed in December 2018, also cynically: “walk to your hearts’ content, I will never meet any of your demands. Five million of you can gather” (hence the opposition’s adoption of the slogan of those protests: “One of five million”).
The Serbian students act in an avant-garde way that extends far beyond Serbia, but attributing various left-wing mirages about changing the planet to them is risky
The largest mass gathering in the history of Belgrade demystified the myth of the so-called critical mass, because it doesn’t have to mean anything in and of itself. Hence also the risk that euphoria will transform into apathy among those yearning for a coup. The Serbian students really come across as sensational compared to the insipidness of Serbia’s hybrid democracy. They act in an avant-garde way that extends far beyond Serbia, but attributing various left-wing mirages about changing the planet to them is risky. The only “ideology” of the student movement is constitutional patriotism.
We’ve also seen the return of the slogan of the student protests of 1996/97 – “Belgrade is the world” – but the world is no longer the same. International circumstances have generally favoured Vučić, and he’s been able to guarantee that changed world a stabilitocracy. The “Serbian Spring” has threatened his position, though not necessarily definitively. At least until that world at large identifies and acknowledges an alternative.
Perhaps this is perhaps also why one gets the impression that Vučić received only a “measured reprimand” from António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, due to his regime’s copycat character. Speaking last 24th October after a meeting in Belgrade with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Serbian president said that “Tusk is to blame for me not being at the BRICS summit in Kazan today”. What kind of guest would need to arrive in Belgrade to prevent Vučić from travelling to Moscow for the 9th May Victory Parade – which will be a jubilee one, marking 80 years since victory over Nazism and fascism? The Russians have already invited him and expect him to meet with Putin.
It would, naturally, be most elegant for Vučić to go to Moscow and stand on stage alongside some American officials = as was the case when, following victory in WWII, at Lenin’s mausoleum, standing in the box next to Stalin was an exclusive guest of the wartime ally, in the form of famous U.S. General, and later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Photo: Goran Srdanov