Every 30 years, student protests with social and political implications occur in Serbia.
And so it has been for a century.
Young communists and illegals 20s They sought to put a stop to fascism and government repression, then during the June 1968 movements, academics desired more socialism and equality, and in the XNUMXs, students in Serbia fought against the regime of Slobodan Milošević.
For two months, students in Serbia have been demanding fundamental changes in society through university blockades and protests, with the support of tens of thousands of citizens.
Even compared to 1968 - when the first mass political protest was launched in socialist Yugoslavia, the current student rebellion in Serbia is richer and larger in content, says Croatian historian Hrvoje Klasić.
They are at the forefront in terms of duration and mass, but also in terms of effects.
"The consequences and successes are already much greater than in 1968."
"Several ministers have been replaced, the government has fallen, some people have been arrested, but those are already big changes," he says in an interview with the BBC in Serbian.
The Zagreb students in 1971 during the Croatian Spring did not succeed as well, nor did they succeed in Serbia in the XNUMXs, reminds a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb.
"These are more authentic, more sincere, and perhaps their success is greater precisely because of their innocence and naivety," says Klasić.
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Modern democratic societies are accustomed to protests, and in Serbia they have been almost an everyday occurrence for years, but it was completely unexpected in socialist Yugoslavia, and punishable in the kingdom.
The students who went on strike in the mid-1930s over inequality and disenfranchisement were fighting in completely different circumstances.
The Communist Party, which some followed at the time, had been banned for 15 years, and membership was punishable by imprisonment and sometimes death.
"They didn't do anything significant at the time, but they strengthened hardened communists, like Milovan Đilas, to persevere in the struggle, which gave them strength and organizational experience that they would use in World War II."
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How different are the student protests from those of '68?
Three decades later, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is run by communists, and that is why the students who fought against the so-called red bourgeoisie In 1968, "we absolutely shocked everyone - both parents and the authorities," says Klasić.
"Criticism was expected from the capitalist West or the Soviet Union, China and Albania, but not from one's own children," adds the book's author. Yugoslavia and the world 1968.
They lasted a total of a week and had an ideological and political platform set by the professors, as ideologists, but also participants.
They relied on ideas The practice of philosophy which criticized society, emphasizing the difference between the theory - what is written in documents and the practice of socialism - what Yugoslav students see around them.
"They thought the program of the League of Communists was good, but the politicians failed them and they are to blame for its non-implementation. They did not seek changes in the system, but changes within the existing regime."
"This distinguished them from their colleagues in France and America who were calling for abandoning capitalism and moving towards socialism," says Klasić.
The current protests in Serbia do not have a clear ideological coloration, but students are demanding a radical change to the existing system - from top to bottom.
The attitude towards authority also differs, says Klasić, adding that students in 1968 wore Tito's pictures because they valued his reputation in the world, but also in the war, as well as his success on the domestic front - that he kept peoples who "were slaughtering each other and putting them in camps together and in peace for 20 years."
In such an undemocratic society, it was not even possible to be publicly against Tito, he adds.
"And Tito behaved very wisely, he remained silent for seven days, did not declare himself, and then he waited for the right moment and chose the right words."
"He managed to convince the students, I would say he managed to seduce them, and they withdrew after his speech," says the historian.
Some of the students planned to continue the protests in the fall, but that summer the Soviet Union attacked Czechoslovakia, and they gave up for fear that they would also attack Yugoslavia.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, however, has already shown with his first appearances after the protests that power and himself are more important to him than the voice of the people, the professor assesses.
"Tito knew how to assess the voice of the people and how to act with the masses, Aleksandar Vučić knows only how to act with the masses who applaud him and exalt his cult of personality."
"He either doesn't want to talk to those who think differently or belittles them and calls them enemies and traitors."
When Belgrade was blocked by protests by high school and university students on January 24, Vučić organized a rally supporter in Jagodina, and seven days later, while they were walking towards Novi Sad and blocking three bridges on the Danube, he stayed in the Rasina district and talked to the locals.
Similar methods - plenums and no protest leader
When comparing the protests of 1968 and the current ones, there are similarities, especially in the form of the protests.
"The patterns established in America and France in the 1960s are being repeated, there are plenums - direct democracy, lectures and protest marches."
"In Yugoslavia in 1968, students literally copied that model, locked themselves in their faculties, barricaded themselves, and then everyone had the right to speak, there was no leader, but the collective will was emphasized," Klasić describes.
Already in the first month of the faculty blockade, the Serbian authorities and the media close to them allegedly read into these, as the historian calls them, universal forms of protest. "blockade cookbook", which is the name of the handbook for Croatian students of the Faculty of Philosophy from 2009.
This was used as evidence of interference by foreign services, especially Croatian ones, in the protests in Serbia, which officials talk about almost daily, and even several citizens of Croatia expelled from the country.
"And the thing is very simple, the students just described what the organization of a student protest looks like, but it's like a union in Belgrade copying how Renault unionists in France are leading a strike and then saying that they influenced each other," says the professor from Zagreb.
The overlap between the protests of 60 years ago and today is that both times were triggered by seemingly isolated events that only exposed broader dissatisfaction.
The occasion for the first major uprising of Yugoslav youth in Belgrade was a fight with the police while entering a music and entertainment event, and in 2024 it was the collapse of the canopy of the railway station in Novi Sad, when 15 people were killed and two were seriously injured.
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The students of 1968 also received support from cultural workers – Desanka Maksimović, Branko Ćopić, actors Dragomir Bojanić Gidra and Stevo Žigona, although today it is far more numerous.
However, they failed to attract workers at that time, because a working class uprising "would really be the end" for the Yugoslav authorities, Klasić notes.
"Students did not leave the faculty in 1968 because they knew they were safe there due to the autonomy of the university."
"The moment they took to the streets of Belgrade and other cities in 2024 and 2025, they were joined by a mass of ordinary citizens, as well as professional groups - lawyers, professors, doctors," the historian points out the differences.
Lack of an exit strategy and the role of the opposition
What many student protests have in common is that they desire profound changes, but they lack a clear exit strategy.
"Throughout history, it has been shown that neither in the world, nor in Yugoslavia, nor in 1968, nor in 1971 in Zagreb, did they have any results that were in line with what the students wanted."
"No matter how concrete the students' demands may seem now, they are very general, and in order to fulfill them, Serbian society would have to change - politics, the judiciary, the media, and that is very difficult to achieve," says Klasić.
The exit strategy is therefore the biggest problem of the protests in Serbia, he adds.
"Tito's speech and support for students gave the opportunity win win situation, the students said 'okay, he didn't arrest us, he didn't kill us, he gave us the right', and Tito neither replaced anyone nor did anything.
"It's hard for that to happen in Serbia."
Fulfilling the demands today would mean that Vučić and the regime he leads would leave the political scene in Serbia, and no politician wants to do that, he adds.
At the same time, the opposition, at the request of the students, is staying away from the protests for now.

Three decades ago, these groups were allies.
In the 1990s, opposition parties led protests alongside students and managed to form a coalition and jointly defeat Milošević, despite their huge differences.
The quality and strength of students today are inversely proportional to the power of the Serbian opposition, says Klasić.
"The problem is that the opposition doesn't even have an entry strategy, how to get involved in the whole story, so as not to contaminate the students, and still show the public what they can vote for one day," says Klasić.
It is possible that students with a joint list would achieve success in the elections now, but they do not want that.
"These are young people who are 19 or 20 years old, who have their lives and the best time of their studies ahead of them, and why should they take on the burden of saving Serbian society?"
Vučić's three scenarios
Historically, Vučić had three options for responding to protests without using force, Klasić estimates.
"He blew one scenario right away, and that was Tito's - to repent, admit his mistake, and promise to fix it, which he had already missed by belittling him."
"The second is Slobodan Milošević's, from the beginning of 2000, when the president ultimately had to accept the students who took to the streets and accept the election results, but that scenario ultimately led to his arrest and imprisonment," says the historian.
Student demonstrations against the Milošević regime, led by the opposition, have been ongoing intermittently since 1996, when accusations began that the government had stolen the elections.
The 1990s in Serbia were marked by wars in the former country, as well as sanctions and poverty.
In such circumstances, student protests led to clashes with the police, the government responded by organizing counter-rallyes, and the political turmoil reached its peak on October 5, 2000, when Milošević's regime finally fell.
The very next year, Milošević was arrested and extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, where he was charged with genocide and war crimes in Kosovo, but he died before the verdict.
The third scenario that Vučić could use from history is the maneuver of French President Charles de Gaulle in May 1968, after violent demonstrations and opposition to the Vietnam War, says Klasić.
"De Gaulle watched Paris burn for a month, literally, as students and workers protested, not knowing how it would end."
"It started with a garbage strike and there were three-meter-high piles of garbage on the streets, on warm May days, and it all smelled and created big problems."
When he saw that the protesters had grown tired, he called elections and remained in power.
"De Gaulle waited for the moment and said 'you think your way, I think mine', called early elections and completely defeated the opposition," Klasić concludes.
When the Serbian Parliament states resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, the deadline is to form a new government or call early elections within the next month.
Whatever the outcome of the protests, "Serbian students have brightened the face of their generation far beyond the borders of Serbia," says Klasić.
And here he sees a similarity with 1968, when young people were perceived as uninterested in partisan battles - Sutjeska and Neretva, but they have shown the opposite, adds a professor who works with these generations, who many have written off as uninterested in everything except virtual life.
"The students in Belgrade taught us a lesson that we can and must count on them, that they are very articulate, focused, original and inventive, I was thrilled by that."
"Without going into whether they are right or not, for anyone who participates, it will be one of the brightest spots in their biography."
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