How many more people are needed to student protests succeeded in Serbia? No one else. Namely, according to respectable studies that deal with this dramatic issue and which social theorists and security services mostly consider relevant, and which were occasionally written about by the local press, the critical mass of protesters against the regime has already been reached. According to the so-called "3,5 percent rule", which was discovered 14 years ago by the American scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stefan, peaceful protests in a country would lead to the change of the regime, no matter what state it was in, if 3,5 percent of the population stood up against it. In Serbia, which has 6,6 million inhabitants, the threshold after which the regime sooner or later falls is 230000 people. And by all accounts, it has been largely achieved.
We usually think that it is necessary for the absolute majority of the population to physically take to the streets, as in elections, in order to lose power, but this is not the case at all, because it is one thing to vote, and quite another to be active in protest - even if you have the same political stance. When at some point a protest gathers 3,5 percent of the population, no government, no matter how repressive, can no longer withstand the pressure of the citizens. It is not at all necessary for citizens to take over institutions in any way, for example through violence. The fact is that in the face of such a large number of citizens who actively oppose it, the regime loses its ability to govern and has no choice but to move towards resolution and give in to demands. It is shown that if his choice is a violent response, he never succeeds in doing so. On the contrary.
A detailed historical analysis shows that from 1900 until today there has never been a protest anywhere in the world that gathered such a large part of the population, and that was then unsuccessful. There are no rules for how long and in what way, but judging by that regularity, the student protest cannot fail in the end. The watershed event that foreshadowed this was the magnificent protest on March 15 when, quite obviously, student support could be measured in one place. In the days after that, sometimes anxious and sometimes so sublime, the whole society inevitably returns to that watershed event, so colorful and all those fragments of the people, scenes that we are, of course, used to at protests, although never in such numbers, in that surreal flood of people.
CIVIL RESISTANCE LAW
Erica Chenoweth, a professor at Harvard University, actually researched whether such peaceful demonstrations could even be considered effective. Together with Maria Stefan, she examined hundreds of different protests against the regime over a period of 106 years and came to surprising conclusions. They published these findings in a book from 2011 Why Civil Resistance Works, which attracted a lot of attention and in a certain way changed the attitude towards peaceful civil movements.
"When they attract impressive support from citizens, whose activism can take the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other peaceful forms of non-cooperation, these efforts separate regimes from their sources of power and lead to astonishing results," the authors state in the book.
Their unusual rule of 3,5 percent is not just an empirical finding, but can be explained by the complex relationships that exist in every society, the silent majority that supports change but does not protest, and the collapse of the regime. It turns out that most protests, especially those that fail, never get anywhere near the 3,5 percent mark. A key finding addressed by other researchers relates to the success of peaceful protests, which have proven to be far more effective than aggressive and armed rebellions.
The main reason is that peaceful demonstrations can attract a much larger number of people and it is not necessary to be physically and militarily fit to fight, while on the other hand, the armed forces of the regime are much less willing to act against peaceful demonstrators, for many reasons. It turns out that for these and other reasons, aggressive protests and riots succeed in only 23 percent of cases, while peaceful demonstrations succeed in as many as 53 percent. In addition, every demonstration that gathered more than 3,5 percent of the population - succeeds. By the way, it is interesting that there are no armed uprisings or aggressive protests that have ever attracted 3,5 percent of the population.
BREAKING DAY
The student protest is a big social event, probably the biggest that happened in Serbia in the 21st century. In the last two decades, there hasn't been an event that could match it, right? It is certainly not a mistake to think of him as history, no matter what happened next. Its consequences, no matter how it ends, will be long-term for the simple reason that the bearers and main actors of this event are extremely young people, those who will live and shape Serbia for the next six decades, and maybe even longer.
The breaking day in that fight has probably already happened. After four months of blockades of all state universities, sacrificial marches, protests and gatherings across the country, after large demonstrations in Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Nis, students managed to physically gather a previously unrecorded number of demonstrators in Belgrade on March 15, far exceeding the threshold of 3,5 percent. Thanks to good organization and tactics, despite the provocations and the dark incident with the "sound cannon" affair, the rally passed without casualties and peacefully like all other student rallies. It has already been forgotten that on the eve of the protest, city and railway traffic did not work, citizens were constantly threatened that they would be killed, but that did not stop the torrents of people from heading towards Belgrade.
The number of cases has never been reliably established, but it is certain that on that historic day the students managed to gather significantly more than 230000 citizens, or 3,5 percent of the population of Serbia, on the streets of Belgrade. Only according to the estimate of the Archives of Public Meetings in Belgrade, around 300000 participants were counted at one point that day, but their number was probably much higher - in the millions, considering so many occupied locations and columns that were just arriving from various parts of the city at the moment when the crowd poured into Slavia and the streets around it.
In the days after the protests, in the atmosphere of procrastination and media pressure, it is not bad to change the perspective. What does it all look like on the other side?
Whatever he did, the regime could not hide the scenes of the protest itself from its people, they saw the people or at least a part of them, if only out of basic curiosity. And what they saw, in fact, is so massive that it can no longer be explained by point software, left-right movement, foreign mercenaries and simple conspiracies with colored revolutions. It is, on such a scale, so different from the regime of untruth, from the image from the regime media that creates the dark, fictitious world into which Serbia has sunk. And after so many crises that could always be "explained", now it is still inexplicable for many followers of the regime. From that perspective, the number of people on the streets of Belgrade was surreal. Surreal number of citizens who know the truth.
Inevitably, sensing the importance of the event, even if it does not think about the 3,5 percent threshold, the regime continuously tries to portray the protest of March 15 as smaller, so according to its own opinion, it "consolidated itself in the media", invented all kinds of narratives, abolished salaries and began to exert new pressure on education and universities, but its position did not improve at all. The government has fallen, fissures are visible everywhere, the effectiveness of the government is decreasing, and officials and activists close to the government can hardly gather anywhere without provoking reactions from the citizens. City assemblies work hidden behind police cordons, and an increasing number of cities declare the person who performs the function of the president and his close associates to be undesirable persons in their communities.
PEOPLE IN SILENCE
In the meantime, the resistance spread capillaryly to every corner of society. Choruses and blockades multiplied like an avalanche. The non-governmental organization CRTA thus counted that 1697 various protests were held throughout Serbia during March. It seems that this avalanche can no longer be stopped, especially considering the fact that the initial student protest has no leader, is not managed and is not politically colored, but has a national character. Given the ruling party's habit of delaying everything, so that even when the prime minister tenders his irrevocable resignation, that resignation takes more than 40 days to reach the National Assembly, it could be a long time before the regime buckles under the pressure.
The autocrat at the head of such a regime, the one for whom so many people took to the streets, and all his plans failed, is probably roaring, threatening or fatherly explaining to the people around him that the most important battle is not lost. He tells lies about media consolidation - of course. And he wonders, inevitably, what they saw. Whatever their plans, new threats of bloodshed and affirmations of loyalty, every hour, every minute, there are revealed sabotages from within, mistrust after a failed action, excuses and justifications, more and more cover-up campaigns. The most loyal followers undoubtedly repeat platitudes and stand still, but if they have seen the day of the breakthrough, they can never experience the boss in the same way again because now the image of the popular flood lights up somewhere in the corner of their minds. And it will never go out.
The people abandoned him. And he showed it, literally in silence. He acquitted himself by remaining silent and it is only a question of when, with which elections and governments, it will become a formal state. Sooner or later, they themselves have to start thinking, if they haven't already, what and how they will do without him, without his dark magic over the people. Without power. And he, suspicious of everyone, inevitably deceives himself that the magic is still there, that it will come, that he got the image of that mass out of people's minds after all, that he made enough noise, or he didn't, he'll do it again tomorrow. And then, at night, in the dead of night, he wanders alone through the presidency, stands in front of the curtain and moves it, but gives up. There's no noise on the other side of the shaft, but he doesn't dare. It just fixes the fabric. Maybe he's lurking on the other side. Maybe it's still there now. People in silence.
