Generally the revolution in Serbia was made possible through the a combination of social forces:
  1. The opposition DISMANTLED with the power base of the disctator i.e. Ordinary peoples’ fear of the regime.  
  2. They used creative POLITICAL SYMBOLS, MUSIC, ACTIONS,  symbols, music and actions in order to clearly show how bad Milosovic the dictator was.
  3. They used PARADES, ART, GARFITTI, COMMERCIALS, FLYERS, EVENTS, WEDDINGS, BURIALS, TAXI, TOILETS, HOTELS,  etc. in order to convey their message.
  4. They translated the message in local languages, for people to understand
  5. Political alliance of opposition parties (about 18 of them which earlier were fighting each other now united in their demand for democracy) during the election.
  6.  Then there were workers resistance and especially the miners from the industry that served the major part of the energy of the country. Thousands of miners joined in a strike closed the work and made the mine stand still. Later, when the strikes spread, closer the the revolution of the 5th October a general strike made the impact of this workers based resistance really felt. So, they were the economic resistance. 
  7. Like in many struggles the cities, especially the capital are at the centre. But thanks to the strong support of several opposition groups in the country side (e.g. Otpor and the opposition parties) it was possible already after about ten days to mobilise several hundreds of thousands in the capital. People were coming in from all over the country in car and bus caravans. They even brought bulldozers with them in order to be prepared to break through police barricades…This was the literal demonstration of the support of the people of Serbia.
  8. And, as far as I understand, it was important that several people inside the opposition kept communication with the only real source of strength of the regime: the police and the military. By continous dialogue and attempt to win key people of the police and military over to the side of the opposition they knew all along the demonstration of the 5th of October what was going on. E.g. they realised that the police would put up barricades but would not defend them and that there were several members of the police that would refuse to obey orders to use violence.

    And since the opposition consciously decided not to use any violence against the police and by behaving friendly to them (greeting them, talking to them, smiling, etc) they wanted to show that they were welcome to come over to the opposition. I don’t know how extensive this became but I think the attempt was really interesting and significant for the strategy. This was the important attempt to create a opposition-police/military relationship.

If you take all this together it seems like a good blueprint for bringing down any dictator…
(Disclaimer: of course this is only a quick and impressionistic analysis of the revolution, but I got inspired to share my thoughts, feel welcome to correct me or add information on the case or analysis).

Within our network there is one researcher, Jorgen Johansen (that is “jj” in the different blog entries below…), who is doing extensive research on the Serbian case, some of his work is published and more will come. He compares different nonviolent revolutions around in the world and Serbia is one of his main cases. Email him directly if you want to know more about this trend of peaceful revolutions or the Serbian case: jjahimsa @ hotmail. com (without spaces when you type the address).

Then we are all hoping to get the first entry by one member who is an expert on Otpor: Majken Sorensen. We will see when that comes…