Memory and protest in Belgrade: Remembering the 1990s in the mass demonstrations of 2023

Abstract

The history of the 1990s and of political life in Serbia can be viewed as a history of protest. It was during this decade, in which Slobodan Milošević held power, that an entire generation of activists became part of a process of learning to engage in civil resistance. In waves of massive anti-regime protests as well as in smaller, yet persistent, anti-war protests, they asserted that ‘Belgrade is the World’. This article examines the ways in which practices and themes from these protests have resurfaced more recently, and how this activism is remembered and referenced in the 2020s. Based on data collected in Belgrade during anti-regime protests in 2023, which began as a movement ‘against violence’ (‘protiv nasilja’), it traces how the memory of protest of the 1990s turned into memory in protest as it appeared in banners, chants, slogans and speeches, as well as in everyday conversation among citizens, some three decades later. Deploying the concept of the memory-activism nexus, the article analyses generational claims in Serbia, the practices of protesters, their hope in activism, their fear of cultivating false expectations and their continuing demands for a better future. It places cultural memory in Serbia in the context of a politics of disappointment, illustrating that memory in protest can function as both a mobilising force and a source of political paralysis.

Keywords

activism memory politics of disappointment protest Serbia

Introduction

In early May 2023, citizens poured into the streets of Belgrade en masse, gathering in front of the Serbian parliament building to demand change. On 3 May, a mass shooting had taken place at a school in the city centre, followed by another mass shooting in a nearby village the next day. All told, 19 people were killed, primarily young children (Higgins, 2023). Over several months, a series of silent commemorations of these victims – attended by shocked and appalled citizens who came to express their grief and offer support to the families of those who were lost – evolved into demonstrations dubbed the Srbija protiv nasilja (‘Serbia against violence’) protests. The hashtag #protivnasilja (against violence) was used on social media to identify the weekly demonstrations and to engage with them online.

What were at first quiet assemblies of concerned citizens in the form of public mourning soon became massive weekly demonstrations held on Saturday evenings. Protesters marched through the city and issued direct critiques of the current government led by Aleksandar Vučić. They denounced the culture of violence that had governed their society since the 1990s, attributing this in part to an implicit propagation of violence by tabloid news outlets and reality television shows that had helped create a permission structure for violent behaviour in Serbian society (Pavlović, 2024).¹ The call to action issued in Belgrade quickly spread to smaller towns and other municipalities in Serbia, where citizens joined in demanding a number of measures to counter violent trends in the country.²

From an early stage, these demonstrations against violence were reported as the largest protests in Serbia since the toppling of Slobodan Milošević on 5 October 2000 (Higgins, 2023; Roussi, 2023). As this civic energy flowed through the streets of Belgrade once again, some recognisable practices and repertoires from the protests of the 1990s began to resurface and strongly influence newer ones.³ This article explores these 2023 protests against violence and how the protests of the 1990s were remembered in them. More broadly, it examines the ways in which earlier protest movements in Serbia still informed the actions of citizens taking part in mass anti-regime demonstrations decades later.

The extent to which memory and activism are intertwined has been at the heart of recent discussions in memory studies (Gutman and Wüstenberg, 2021, 2023; Rigney, 2018). As the relationship between memory and activism becomes better understood, the need for interdisciplinary approaches that bridge social movement and memory studies is clear. The following areas of research have been identified as particularly fruitful for a cross-disciplinary treatment of memory and activism: repertoires, historical events, generations, collective identities and emotions (Berger et al., 2021). The memory-activism nexus (Rigney, 2018) serves as a bridge connecting these fields and themes, and thus facilitates a systematic analysis of the interplay between memory activism, memory of activism and memory in activism, generating new insights regarding civic actions, activism and protest.

Through the lens of the memory-activism nexus, this article examines data collected in the 2023 mass protests in Belgrade to offer insights into the interchange between memory of activism and memory in activism during protest. Specifically, it shows how both materialise in new actions, in dialogue with the practices and repertoires of previous anti-regime protests from the 1990s, as traced in the streets of Belgrade among citizens and activists from various generational belongings and walks of life. In previous research, my focus has been on memory activism as it becomes the memory of activism (Fridman, 2022), but here I turn to memory in protest, showing how protest events from the 1990s are collectively remembered and how they inform protest cycles in the 2020s, as citizens claim the streets of their city once more.

By attending weekly protests in Belgrade from early May to September 2023, I was able to record speeches, images, banners and interactions as a participating observer. I also held informal conversations with Belgrade citizens and conducted formal interviews with protesters as well as with people who chose not to partake in the demonstrations.⁴ The article relies primarily on this empirical evidence collected in 2023, but also reflects on data obtained in earlier research I conducted during protests held in Belgrade in 2017 and 2018. Given that I did not reside in Serbia in the 1990s, my knowledge of historical protests has been acquired over two decades of academic research. However, I have also observed and traced the creation of the cultural memory of these protests in an ongoing history of protest in the country, witnessing rounds of mass demonstrations in the 2010s and engaging with different generations of citizens and activists in Serbia.

The data analysed in this article highlight both the visual and discursive memory of protest (Rigney and Smits, 2023), as the 1990s continue to be present and referenced in banners, chants, slogans, speeches and everyday conversations among citizens of Belgrade. The article thus explores the transgenerational presence and claims of activists, their practices and hopes, and their fear of cultivating false expectations as they demand a better future, specifically in the context of a politics of disappointment in Serbia. In the sections that follow, I first discuss the culture of memory in Serbia and its roots in the 1990s. I briefly review the different waves of protest in the country that emerged in response to the disappointment regarding Serbian governance that has been prevalent for decades among its citizens. I then present and analyse empirical evidence from 2023 as well as from earlier demonstrations in Belgrade and trace the appearance of memory in these protests as elements of pro-democracy actions calling for social change.

The 1990s in Serbia’s memory culture

In Serbia, the decade of the 1990s remains regularly referenced in everyday discussions in the 2020s. Often, people view the 1990s as a reference point for how bad things can get or how low things can go. Memories of the wars that occurred during the break-up of Yugoslavia blend into and overwhelmingly overlap with other ‘unwanted memories’ from that era (Fridman, 2022). These include, but are not limited to, memories of a decade in which civility was destroyed, the patterns of daily life were ruptured and any sense of normalcy was absent. The 1990s are therefore burdened by memories of deprivation, a lack of hope, a chaos that upended everyday rhythms of life (Gordy, 1999); high inflation, international isolation and sanctions, mass emigration, a refugee crisis, high levels of internal social tension resulting from economic crisis, and poverty; and on top of all that, it was marked by a politics of warmongering and ethnonationalism.

However, the 1990s also hold memories of mass anti-regime protests and outbursts of new creative impulses in activism. Indeed, these memories embody an entanglement of hope and disappointment. Some have argued that the history of the 1990s and of the country’s ‘political life’ can therefore be traced as a history of protest (Blagojević, 2006). Waves of anti-regime demonstrations demanding the ouster of Milošević brought students and opposition activists to the streets in large numbers in 1991–1992, 1996–1997 and 2000. At the same time, a much smaller but persistent anti-war movement also emerged (Dević, 1997; Fridman, 2011).⁵ An entire generation of activists thus spent the decade learning to engage in civil resistance, as they marched and made demands, declaring ‘Belgrade is the World’.

In Serbia, people of all ages tend to associate the 1990s with a looming sense of the abnormal.⁶ As one might expect, this experience of abnormality resonated particularly with those who came of age in Yugoslavia; they not only experienced the loss of ‘having a place in the world’ (Jansen, 2009: 825) but also lost their country as they knew it, including their sense of mobility, while living under international sanctions for a decade. Yet, discourses of the abnormal also prevail among the generation born during and after the 1990s, who continue to live amid the consequences and legacies of that decade. The return of a sense of normalcy in the 2010s and 2020s has not diminished the desire of many of these young people to leave Serbia permanently. As Johnson (2019) has found, this generation tends to associate a normal life with an ordered moral state and aspires to emigrate in order to escape certain legacies of the 1990s. The choice to leave is not necessarily related to the failure of anti-war efforts or the persistence of memories of violence, war or war crimes, but rather to the failure to craft a normal state that functions. This longing to live in a ‘normal’ and functioning state, as I will discuss below, re-emerged in 2023 as an important theme among citizens, both young and old, as they marched in mass protests.

The official memory of the 1990s was constructed over time in Serbia, and in many ways is still in the making three decades after the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed. New memory regimes have been put in place in all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, as official memories have been successfully narrowed, nationalised (Kuljić, 2009) and subjected to historical revisionism (Đureinović, 2018; Stojanović, 2011). Over the years, there have been efforts by the state to break cleanly from any responsibility for the wars of the 1990s (Gordy, 2013; Subotić, 2013) and newly created state structures have engaged in the trivialisation of war crimes with the goal of pushing these crimes slowly into oblivion (Kuljić, 2009).

Memory activists, such as the members of the feminist anti-war group Women in Black (žene u crnom), engaged in early anti-denial work to challenge these ethnicised mnemonic regimes of the state, forming regional networks of ‘commemorative solidarity’ (Athanasios, 2017; Fridman, 2022) and employing various mnemonic practices, including alternative commemorative events and dates recorded on alternative civic calendars. As the memory of activism began to emerge among a second generation of memory activists in Serbia, activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) revisited themes related to the legacies of anti-war and anti-nationalist activism that took place in the 1990s, led by groups like the Women in Black, among others. These anti-war actions and the activists themselves are mostly unknown to citizens born after that decade, as they were deliberately erased from public memory and public spaces. Hence, remembering and learning about the main figures of the anti-war movement in Serbia and their actions is a way to salvage them from a manufactured obscurity. Younger activists do this by leading people on ‘memory walks’ and by offering an alternative education, both of which function as important practices of ‘political imagination’ that critically challenge spaces where war crimes and war criminals are glorified (Hola and Simić, 2018).⁷

Notably, anti-war protesters and protests of the 1990s have been pushed further into oblivion than the anti-regime actions of that decade, which were led by the opposition and students. Indeed, the memory of activism and memory in activism traced in this article developed among protesters in reference to these anti-regime protests. Still, I argue that the legacies of violence which marked the 1990s and inspired anti-war protests were in fact acknowledged in protests in 2023, even if the memory of this anti-war activism remains marginal and at risk of disappearing from public knowledge. What persists of this memory of anti-war protests and what has resurfaced as the memory of anti-regime protests represent keys to understanding the normalisation of a culture of violence that began in the past but prevails in the present. By presenting an analysis of the appearance of this history of protest in Serbia in 2023, this article contributes not only to our understanding of cultural memory in the post-Yugoslav space but also, and even more so, to our understanding of the memory-activism nexus and its role in societies emerging from and grappling with legacies of war, conflict and violence.

Now and then: waves of civic protest

Memories of past protests in Serbia are in many cases memories of hope turned into disappointment, of the ‘prolonged agony’ that set in as ‘the inertia of institutionalized political actors overcame the energy of citizens’ (Lazić, 1999: 21). These memories have resurfaced in the streets, with the 1990s referenced in demonstrations in the 2010s and now again in the 2020s. It is in memories such as these that the mistrust of citizens in a weak and divided opposition echoes from the past into the present, bringing to light once more that this opposition has been perpetually incapable of translating civic energy in the streets into lasting political change. I argue that these memories were woven into the protests of 2023 and into some earlier waves of protest over the last decade, both as a mobilising force of motivation and hope but also as a source of hesitation, emanating from a fear of further disappointment. In the midst of such contradictions, an analysis of the interplay between memory and activism thus becomes particularly valuable.

For people who carry living memories of marching in Belgrade during the cold winter of 1996–1997, or for those who took part in the actions of Otpor⁸ in the build-up to 5 October 2000 – the day the Milošević era effectively ended – memories of this civic engagement and participation, of the high energy, the creativity and the adrenaline that filled the streets are still very present, even after so many decades. As a Belgrade-based correspondent from the Italian online news platform Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa wrote on the 10th anniversary of 5 October:

Paradoxically, the 1990s were the most beautiful and most difficult years of my life; particularly beautiful because I was part of the citizens’ uprising, because I met brave and smart people, and because I was a small part of a great chapter in the history of a different Serbia, a Serbia I still believe in. (Tadić, 2010)

Yet, while continuing to associate the ousting of Milošević with memories of happiness and hope, this author questioned a decade later whether it had been ‘worth it’, as the country was still ‘not the Serbia they wished for’ (Tadić, 2010).

Indeed, many citizens had high hopes after the fall of Milošević, but these hopes would eventually fall too. When, after a decade, mass anti-regime protests finally succeeded, expectations mounted for a political transformation, a fresh start, a return to normalcy, even a social catharsis, but the failure to achieve genuine change in subsequent years resulted in a great sense of disappointment.⁹ For some, the 12 March 2003 political assassination of pro-democracy prime minister Zoran Đinđić marked the moment that the transition they fought so hard for was paused indefinitely, a sentiment that was reflected in the claims made by many who joined demonstrations in 2023 and decried the failure of the country to transform in any meaningful way over the last two decades.

In fact, there was something of a lull in civic action and activism in Serbia for some years after Đinđić’s assassination. Citizens reeled from a return to the politics of disappointment, which stung even more after a short and optimistic period of reprieve, and they soon grew disillusioned with the party Đinđić had once led. Nevertheless, a number of mass demonstrations and mobilisations did take place in the years after his death and became more frequent in the 2010s as power was increasingly consolidated in the politically far right. Furthermore, a decline in institutional citizen participation forced people to seek other means to express their views and needs in Serbia, leading to a rise in the number of extra-institutional civic initiatives and local movements in the country (Fiket and Đorđević, 2022). These initiatives have been the impetus for demonstrations in 2016 led by the then-new initiative Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own, to claim rights to the city following illegal demolitions of houses in the Savamala quarter, which stood in the way of the government-led Belgrade Waterfront project. Other initiatives included the 2017 protests Against Dictatorship/Against the Abnormal that followed that year’s presidential elections; actions in the winter of 2018–2019 under the banner of One of Five million, prompted by a physical attack on an opposition leader; and protests in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic (see Figure 1). In the last several years, waves of green and environmental activism have also culminated in mass demonstrations against plans by the multinational Rio Tinto Group to open a lithium mine in Serbia.¹⁰

Figure 1.

Protest timeline, 1991–2023.

The mass demonstrations of the recent decade have generated a rich literature that has examined these actions from various angles with studies exploring, for example, reactions to democratic backsliding, the rise of competitive authoritarianism and regime strategies in protest (Spasojević and Lončar, 2023), citizenship and solidarity (Vasiljević, 2021), patterns of protest activism (Petrović and Petrović, 2017), neoliberalism (Matković and Ivković, 2018), social movements (Fiket et al., 2024), and political participation and citizen disengagement (Pešić et al., 2021). Yet, so far, only very scarce analyses have been done on tracing memory in anti-regime protests in the country (see Fridman and Hercigonja, 2017).

In this rapid succession of protests, it makes sense that the memory of earlier actions is still present in later actions in the form of lived memory for past participants and in the mediated cultural memory of newer and younger ones (see Daphi, 2024). But the temporal proximity of these protests to one another not only acts as a sustaining and mobilising force but also signifies the still unachieved desire for change and normality in Serbia that goes back decades. Hence, when anti-regime demonstrations in 2017 were dubbed protests ‘against the abnormal’ (protiv nenormalnog) and ‘against dictatorship’ (protiv diktature), this was a reference to the 1990s, when democracy was absent and the feeling that normalcy had been lost altogether was widespread. The 2023 protests ‘against violence’ (protiv nasilja) emerged from a similar impulse, fuelled by an urgent desire for normalcy as legacies of violence prevail. In what follows, I will turn to empirical data from these 2023 protests to examine how the memory of earlier activism played into later protests.

Visual repertoires of protests as cultural memory in Serbia

In June 2023, one month into the latest wave of protest in Belgrade, as citizens gathered in front of the Parliament of Serbia on a Saturday evening, I noticed protesters carrying white balloons stamped with ‘Gotov je!’ (he is finished!) and signs reading ‘gotovi su’ (they are finished). White badges with the same slogans were being passed out in the crowd (see Figure 2). Gotov je!, which is often accompanied by the image of a fist, draws on the discursive and visual logic of anti-Milošević demonstrators and Otpor activists in 1999 and 2000, leading up to 5 October. The slogan, used by anti-regime protesters in the 1990s, is already part of cultural memory in Serbia. Now, it has been appropriated by younger protesters who carry no living memories of the ousting of Milošević, but who feel a desire to compel significant change in the political life and political leadership of Serbia.

Figure 2.

‘Gotov je!’ signage seen at the Serbia against violence protest in Belgrade (June 2023). Photos by the author.

Another recognisable mobilising practice originating from the 1990s is the use of whistles, which has also made its way back onto the streets of Belgrade in the last decades. A chorus of whistles has now become part of the protest repertoire in Serbia, creating a familiar soundscape of citizen participation in anti-regime demonstrations across generations. In this way, the memory of activism has become a generational bridge that links older and younger protesters together and also connects older protesters to new actions. For example, when a red Ferrari flag reappeared in the streets of Belgrade in 2023 (see Figure 3), many citizens who remembered the 1990s as participants in the 1996–1997 protests recognised this as a visual marker of that time. A story on BBC News in Serbian noted that ‘Three decades later, the Ferrari flag is in the streets of Belgrade again’. The man who carried that flag in the 1990s, a 53-year-old man named Igor, told the reporter, ‘None of us expected that we would struggle for 88 days then, nor that we would be here again after 30 years’ (Maričić, 2023). Then, the flag was seen as a symbol of freedom and Westernisation in a decade when Serbia was experiencing a major economic crisis, international sanctions and war. Igor carried it in a crowd of protesters who claimed ‘Belgrade is the World’, as a symbol of power, persistence and perseverance (Maričić, 2023). A journalist who was present at the 1996–1997 protests described witnessing then an ‘eruption of joy and satisfaction because things had started, as well as the hope that things would move quickly towards the best that exists in the world and in Europe’ (Maričić, 2023).

Figure 3.

Now and then: the Ferrari flag in 2023 (left) and in 1996–1997 (right). The photo on the left is by the author. The photo on the right is by FoNet. Used with permission.

Another visual continuity that showed up in 2023, which has been seen in earlier waves of protests in Serbia, can be found in the life-sized paper dolls of politicians dressed as prisoners. In the 1990s, they depicted Milošević; now, in 2023, they represent the president and some of his cabinet ministers and allies. Demonstrators who carried these dolls protested against the corruption and lack of political integrity in their country.

Protest déjà vu: generating hope and disappointment

There is a sense of déjà vu in the Belgrade protests as a familiar logic reappears and familiar repertoires reoccur, linking now and then. This was true in 1996–1997, when citizens experienced a déjà vu from the 1991–1992 demonstrations (Blagojević, 2006); and three decades later it happened yet again. While this sense of familiarity does function as a mobilising force in some ways, it also feeds a deep sense of disappointment and even a fear of hope.

I traced these contradictory emotions in different generations of citizens who took to the streets in 2023 to march in anti-regime protests. In week 17 of the protests, for instance, I had a conversation with Smiljan Banjac, a sportswriter from Belgrade who has become a recognisable face at citizen gatherings. He explained that his motivation to protest came first and foremost from his desire to be an engaged citizen, but like almost everyone else I spoke with, his story of activism began in the past, in the protests of the 1990s:

I am now 55 years old, and I have participated in all the demonstrations since the 1990s . . . now as then, I want to live in a normal democratic society, in a normal country, not in a country that is always unstable, and engages in wars and criminal activities. (Interview by author, Belgrade, 24 August 2023)

He said that something was different in 2023, though. In the years of apathy that followed the 2003 assassination of Đinđić, many people had grown numb and had consciously withdrawn from participating in public life until, as Banjac pointed out, they seemed to have awoken again when the violence of mass shootings came so close to touching ‘each one of us’ (Interview by author, Belgrade, 24 August 2023). Another protester I spoke with asserted similarly that protesters, even those despairing of the state of Serbian society, were finding hope in the demonstrations.

Yet, this very same argument was turned on its head by people who came to fear the cultivation of hope after great disappointment, leading some citizens to choose not to join the protests. For example, one woman from Belgrade in her late 50s explained to me:

I was on my way home as I passed by the crowds . . . and I experienced a strong sense of a blast from the past, of a déjà vu . . . that atmosphere [from the 1990s] and that energy–this is who we are! In 1996–97, we were defending something very concrete–our [stolen] votes–our rights as citizens to choose.

But in 2023, she followed the protests only from afar, posing the question: ‘How many times in life do we need to live through this to realise it doesn’t work? Hope was taken away from me when Đinđić was killed, and it never returned’ (Interview by author, Belgrade, 27 August 2023).¹¹

The fatigue and disillusionment this woman expressed, shared by many others of her generation, are in some ways acknowledged by the generation of protesters born after the 1990s. The memory of the protests that took place in that decade mobilised some of these younger protesters to action out of a sense of obligation. A student I spoke with during protests in 2017 explained: ‘Our parents’ generation had the 1991 demonstrations, the 1996–97 demonstrations; now it is our turn, our generation’s time to protest, our demonstrations’. Thus, some people saw the involvement of students in the 2023 protests as an important moment.

Students against violence

In the 2023 protests, students marched behind their own banner (‘students against violence’), asserting their generational belonging as young people in Serbia and their own identity, within the crowd. This made them quite noticeable, even though they did not participate in numbers as significant as in the 1990s. Claiming visibility with their own signs and aesthetics meant they could not be dismissed, an approach that drew not only from the memory of activism and student protest in the 1990s but also from the role of youth and students in socialist Yugoslavia before that (Greenberg, 2014; Vladisavljević, 2008).

As we trace memory in activism, it is notable that the protests of the 1990s are also recalled as ‘student protests’ and that the students who demonstrated in 1992 and 1996–1997 have been referred to as ‘a generation in protest’ (Milić et al., 1999).¹² Because these demonstrations took place alongside opposition and anti-regime protests, they were in dialogue with a convergence of factors, ranging from the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new geopolitical order, to the collapse of the country and the end of the socialist world.¹³ Borrowing from democratic activists in socialist Europe leading up to 1989, students who protested in Serbia in the 1990s used considerable creativity and play in their street actions, introducing music and logos that made activism and protest ‘cool’ (Greenberg, 2014). These remain as much a legacy of these student demonstrations as any bittersweet memories.

A similar impulse of creativity and boldness was also evident in 2023. Weekly speeches were delivered from a truck that served as a moving stage, leading the protests. And early on, student protesters were featured among the speakers on this stage. These students made their voices and demands heard, and also referenced the 1990s in their speeches. Addressing the mass shooting event that initially ignited the protests, for example, one student made a direct connection to the past, saying: ‘This violence has now lasted for 30 years . . . We are a generation born into violence . . . we are a generation that spent its youth in violence. And we inherited violence . . .’ (Speech on 11 July 2023).¹⁴ Referencing the disappointment of their parents’ generation, another student addressed government officials directly, declaring: ‘You can turn a deaf ear on us, but we will be persistent . . . we will not allow you to waste our youth, the same way our parents laid down their youth for democracy on these very same streets . . .’ (Speech on 5 August 2023).

Students and youth are often stereotyped as passive or even apathetic members of Serbian society, but in 2023 in Belgrade, they sought to reclaim their activist role and sent the message that ‘you can count on us!’ (računajte na nas). This is a play on the phrase ne računajte na nas (don’t count on us), which emerged in the 1990s as a slogan meant to send a clear message against corruption and warmongering. In the present, računajte na nas is understood as a call for political engagement, a cry for possibility and a plea to have the option not to leave the country, at least not yet. These rallying cries, in their affirmative and negative variations, thus both appropriated another cultural memory from the past. This was also reflected in how the students held a side event in front of the parliament building in 2023, mocking an unattainable summer vacation on the seaside as they danced to a remake of Djordje Balašević’s song Računajte na nas (You can count on us), covered by the Slovenian band Zaklonišče Prepeva.¹⁵ The song, written in 1978, was something of a generational anthem in Yugoslavia, a promise to shape a future society of which the Partisans would be proud. It reverberates in the present not just as a cultural memory associated with a hope for peace and solidarity, but as a living legacy of Balašević, who, despite his death in 2021, was a prominent voice against the violence that engulfed Yugoslavia in the 1990s as well as a leading critic of the Milošević regime.

Good evening, citizens! Good evening, Diaspora!

The policies of Milošević, mobilisation and life under sanctions led as many as half a million young people to emigrate from Serbia in the 1990s, and the memory and legacy of these mass departures continue to shape public life today.¹⁶ So, when the 2023 protests entered the summer months, in July and August, the time of the year when many citizens in the diaspora return for a short visit, their presence was notable in the demonstrations. Greeting the crowd, a speaker welcomed them all with the words ‘Dobro veće građani I građanke! dobro veće dijaspora!’ (Good evening, citizens (male and female)! Good evening, diaspora!). The crowd replied with shouting, whistling and clapping. Some members of the diaspora gave speeches and joined with local protesters to demand that citizens should ‘turn on their brain and turn off reality shows’ (uključi mozak isključi rijaliti), referring to pro-regime TV channels that are perceived as cultivating a culture of violence.¹⁷

The return of the diaspora, noticeable in the city (and the entire region) every year, is a reminder of the choice to leave or stay. It brings to the fore, time and again, that the legacies of the 1990s still mark Serbia today. For some members of the diaspora who joined the Saturday gatherings in Belgrade, this heightened their emotions. As they marched in 2023 in the streets of a city they had left in disillusion and despair three decades earlier, I noticed how memories of past protests rose within them. Their experience was that of an insider/outsider, framed by their own memory of having participated in protests in the 1990s but made distinct by their decision to leave and build a new life somewhere else.

This may be the decision soon made by many of the students who joined the 2023 protests, who have been targeted, along with other protesters, through direct threats on pro-regime media. Joining the diaspora may become their next option, despite their earnest desire, stated week after week in protest speeches, to stay. As one student put it, ‘I don’t want to leave but I may need to . . . we either make change now, or we will have to leave’ (Speech on 11 July 2023). And, as another said, ‘we are fighting for a future . . . I don’t see my future in a country governed by violence and arrogance . . . that is why we are here’ (Speech on 1 July 2023).¹⁸ When students gathered in the city centre for an action in late September to restore the mural commemorating the assassination of Đinđić, near the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, one student posted the event on Twitter with the comment: ‘The restoration of the Zoran Đinđić mural has begun, and then we move on to the restoration of democracy’ (speech on 25 September 2023). By remembering the pro-democracy legacy of Đinđić, whose assassination made so many in their parents’ generation feel hopeless three decades earlier, these students made a political mnemonic claim, declaring that the search for hope has been resurrected.

Closing remarks

The streets of Belgrade had not yet emptied as I was putting the finishing touches on this article, but as I prepare the final version, it is clear that the ‘Serbia against violence’ protests will soon become memory too. Like protests of the past, their repertoires will thus become part of the memory of activism in Serbia and will perhaps emerge again as memory in activism. Indeed, by tracing some of the mobilising influences in anti-regime protests over time, this article has utilised the memory-activism nexus to show that memory of activism and memory in activism interact and feed each other through a dynamic interplay that occurs between generations of activism and protest. It highlights nuances that may go unnoticed, but which reveal the richness and creativity of contentious action as it is being informed and formed by memory. It also demonstrates how the repertoires of these latest protests are infused with memories of the 1990s, despite ongoing efforts by the state to silence critical engagement with the legacies of violence that stained this decade and to evade questions of political responsibility.

There is a thread that weaves through mass demonstrations in deeply divided societies which have experienced violence and war, and this becomes clear when we consider the participation of different generations and their claims in Serbia, the practices of activists and their hope in activism in the context of a prevailing politics of disappointment. Some citizens are led to non-remembrance as a way of coping with their disappointment and hopelessness, but others, as shown throughout this text, draw on the past as a resource, harnessing it as a still viable mobilising force and insisting on hope. Still, the proximity of protest cycles in Serbia allows us to see rather unambiguously how political disappointment transcends generations, and in 2023, just as in previous waves of protest, citizens in Belgrade clearly articulated what they stand against. Yet, when pressed to articulate what they stand for, what should come after the protests, consensus is elusive. This limits the power of collective action to mobilise further action that can achieve genuine change, which deepens the disappointment so many have felt for years and prevents them from envisioning a better future. In this way, memory has led to a lack of action, political apathy and even paralysis.

If we look beyond Serbia, to a world facing a range of crises, from devastating natural disasters to brutal conflict alongside an intensification of both local and global divisions, we may see memory functioning as a force of contrasts in other places too; a force that mobilises change and inspires hope while it simultaneously produces apathy and disappointment. As this article has shown, this duality adds another layer to the dynamic circulations and flows of memory in protest. In Serbia, where the protests of 2023 will soon become a memory, some of the new practices and aesthetics that arose in this cycle of action are likely to persist. One can imagine, for instance, that future activism may be inspired by a phrase that emerged as a unique representation of the protests when, on their Saturday evening marches, demonstrators began declaring, ‘Mi smo svetlo a oni su tama’ (we are the light, they are the darkness). After the mass shooting in May, some citizens carried signs calling to extinguish the darkness (ugasi mrak) (see Figure 4) and as they marched after sunset, they shone the flashlights on their cell phones into the night (see Figure 5). They were the light. This became a recurring weekly practice, a collective civic action in mass protest and a visual symbol with a mobilising impact in the street that was not part of the existing repertoire of 1990s anti-regime protests. It may very well become part of new practices and a new repertoire that will be traced in future research in yet another wave of protest.

Figure 4.

Sign saying ‘Srbija je u mraku’ (Serbia is in the dark) (left); sign saying ‘Ugasi mrak’ (extinguish the darkness) (right). Photos by the author.

Figure 5.

Protesters shine the flashlights from cell phones into the darkness (left); an Instagram post by Smiljan Banjac that shows protesters chanting the slogan ‘we are the light, they are the darkness’ as they shine the flashlights on their cell phones (20 August 2023) (right). The photo on the left was made by the author. The screenshot on the right was captured from Instagram. Used with permission.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Orli Fridman

Notes

Author biography

Orli Fridman is associate professor at the Belgrade-based Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK). She is also the academic director of the School for International Training (SIT) learning centre in Belgrade. She is the author of Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), and the co-editor, with Sarah Gensburger, of The Covid-19 Pandemic and Memory: remembrance, commemoration and archiving in crisis (Palgrave, 2024) and numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

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