Chronicles of Repression, Chronicles of Resistance: Arts and Culture at the Forefront of State Capture in Serbia

Just four months after the ceremonial reopening of the Novi Sad railway station, the station’s canopy collapsed, killing sixteen people. The Serbian government flatly denied that any construction work had been done at all, much less that the renovations were responsible for the canopy disaster. With no one to take responsibility, the Novi Sad tragedy became a symbol for Serbian citizens not only of the horrific deaths of their fellow citizens but also of long-standing systemic violence and corruption carried out by Aleksandar Vučić’s regime.

Soon after, members of Vučić’s ruling party attacked students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the University of Belgrade at a silent vigil honoring the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy. This sequence of events—the canopy collapse, the denial, and regime violence perpetrated against its citizens—led to spontaneous student protests starting on November 22, 2024. Three days later, students occupied the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, after which all classes and examinations were suspended. Protests quickly spread, springing up at all universities and most secondary schools across the country and positioning the education system as the center of resistance to the regime.

Students hold a large banner reading “We will not give up the General Staff” during the protest “We are a Living Wall” on Nemanjina Street in Belgrade on November 11, 2025. The banner is as wide as Nemanjina Street itself. Behind them is the General Staff Building. Photograph by Aleksa Stanković. Image courtesy of the author.

From the outset of these student-led protests it became clear that, alongside educational institutions, the cultural and artistic sphere occupied a crucial role as a site of resistance to an emerging dictatorship. Recognizing their own role in this organized resistance, at the conclusion of numerous theater performances across Serbia, actors raised their own hands aloft and painted red, along with student ID cards in a poignant visual allusion to a prominent student slogan indicting the regime: “Your hands are bloody.” Audiences enthusiastically welcomed and supported these gestures of resistance, a clear indication of the student movement’s power to spur opposition to the corruption destroying Serbian society and endangering everyday lives.

Professional artist associations soon issued statements supporting the students’ struggle and condemning violence against them. Artists and cultural workers joined the movement, making public statements, participating in demonstrations, and seeking out individual acts of solidarity. Meanwhile, the whole cultural and artistic scene in Serbia would soon face retaliation and repression from the government in the form of verbal intimidation, workplace bullying and harassment, and physical assaults. The core values of society have been fundamentally endangered because of this repression aimed at the closely intertwined spheres of education and culture in Serbia.

Photograph by Aleksa Stanković. Image courtesy of the author.

Capturing Institutions of Culture: Mechanisms of Governance as Mechanisms of Repression

2025 marked an extremely difficult period in Serbian arts and culture. As many have noted, the extent of the damage to the cultural field, including the devastation of institutions, intense censorship, and the total absence of protection for cultural workers and artists, was unprecedented, even when compared to the Nazi occupation of the country. The 2025 attack on culture was primarily aimed at destroying connections with the international arts community. Long-standing international festivals, such as Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) and Belgrade International Film Festival (FEST), were deprived of state funding: in the fall of 2025, BITEF was cancelled for the first time ever while FEST did not happen either, being postponed consequently without clear explanation.  If the festivals were not entirely abolished, their international programming would be obstructed, as in the case of the Sterijino Pozorje – the oldest and most prestigious national drama and theater festival in Serbia, held annually at the Serbian National Theater in Novi Sad. The leadership of important cultural institutions and events was replaced, or resigned under pressure.

The Film Center of Serbia did not announce a call for film production projects for over eighteen months. EU funding programs require financial support from the applicant’s home state, meaning that Serbian filmmakers were prevented from participating in regional and international co-productions. Meanwhile, films chosen for internationally renowned festivals and competitions (such as the Venice Biennale and the Academy Awards) were those that conspicuously towed the Vučić party line through their nationalist and religious messaging, even if produced by unknown artists. Speculation is on the rise about blacklists of politically undesirable individuals across the film industry. Srdan Golubović, winner of multiple international awards, has joined other filmmakers in warning that the sum of these moves represents the destruction of film production itself in Serbia.

One of the most painful acts of cultural repression in 2025 was the police raid on July 22, which ended the blockade of the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade, which had lasted a little over five months. The occupation and blockade had begun on the evening of February 12, 2025. It was carried out by a self-organized group of students as part of wider, months-long student protests and university blockades across Serbia. Protesters argued that SKC had been overly commercialized and alienated from Belgrade University, with spaces rented out to private firms. Their goal was to return the iconic venue to autonomous youth culture and students themselves. The interior was declared the “Liberated SKC”, and entry was restricted in certain phases, requiring a student ID or approval from the student plenum. During the blockade, students successfully organized an intensive artistic and educational program: concerts, film screenings, exhibitions, round tables and panels. They published independent student newspapers and launched a virtual platform alongside a digital radio station, skc.fm. In March 2025, inside the “Liberated SKC”, students launched blokadniFEST(which later merged conceptually with the broader ne:FEST / ne:Bitef wave of guerrilla culture).

Belgrade’s International Film Festival was postponed from its traditional February slot to later in the autumn. As an immediate counter-response to the postponement, the students who occupied SKC decided to provide an alternative cultural space for citizens. Citizens and students could enter the screenings by showing a student ID or picking up free passes at the main gate, which was guarded by student security. In April 2025, the students successfully revived and independently organized the so-called April Meetings, an iconic traditional festival of avant-garde art. After the eviction, the movement shifted online and into open public spaces. In February 2026, a mass protest rally was held right outside the SKC building to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the historic blockade. But, despite the protest, the Student Cultural Center is still under the control and management of the ruling regime

The repression of Serbia’s cultural and artistic scene, however, long predates the student protests of 2024 and 2025. Allocations for culture have been below the recommended level of 1 percent of the total republic budget for more than a decade. The period from 2006 to 2012 were marked by the transition from a phase of more stable financing to a repressive period of austerity, partly caused by the World Economic Crisis (end of 2008). Culture, however, was financed thanks to relatively high budget allocations at the local level. Since Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power in 2012, the situation became even worse.(The government of Ivica Dačić, elected in July 2012, in its first full budget for 2013 reduced allocations for culture to a historically and record low level of only 0.62% of the total state budget. In the period from 2020 to 2025, a stable trend of allocations to culture was maintained at below 0.80 percent while in 2026 totaling only 0.66 percent of the state budget. At the same time, allocations for culture at the local level have been drastically reduced, as shown by allocations at the Belgrade level, which in 2026 fell from 4.5 to 3 percent of the city budget.)

What limited resources that remain are distributed unevenly and according to ideological loyalty rather than professional competence and merit, due to the financial opacity. This treatment of culture and the arts, from neglect and precarity to outright sidelining, fundamentally rests on a mechanism of institutional governance that enables the abuse and disregard of the law. Mechanisms for institutional governance in Serbia are legally structured to ensure continuous political control. Governing boards, which currently consist of five members, play a key role in managing cultural, artistic, and scientific institutions. The state or local agency backing the institution appoints three members to the board, resulting in board majority composed of state appointees. The other two members are recommended by the institution’s trade union or by employee vote. Since the state has ultimate say over the governing board and therefore decides whether those recommended actually join, the current regime has exploited the existing structure to ensure that governing bodies end up composed of regime loyalists rather than qualified cultural practitioners.

This type of governing board—and its usurpation—also plays a crucial role when it comes to selecting directors for public cultural institutions. Directors are formally appointed through an open competition. Candidates must satisfy legal, educational, and experiential requirements, and apply with a program for the institution’s ongoing development. A governing board is responsible for conducting a competition and recommending the most qualified candidate, whereupon the state agency backing the institution makes the final appointment. In practice, however, procedures for selecting both directors and members of governing boards are frequently violated on many levels, from failures to follow procedures and deadlines to refusals to carry out competitions transparently or at all. As a way to skirt the law, the prolonged and repeated appointment of acting directors and board members has become a default and permanent feature of cultural governance under the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Serbia.

Despite the fact that, legally, acting appointments are intended to be exceptional, limited in duration, and those in acting positions subject to the same professional requirements as permanent leadership, the crucial fact that no public competition is required for acting appointments means that regime loyalists have been appointed to acting positions in record number. Acting officials on governing boards knowingly shirk their legal responsibilities, deliberately leaving institutions in a state of limbo. Since 2022, reports have demonstrated that the judiciary branch has largely failed to curtail unlawful acting appointments, even as political passivity further fuels the damage caused by them. Furthermore, authorities can dismiss acting officials without explanation at any time, so compliance with political directives is virtually guaranteed. The regime justifies this arrangement by scapegoating others for its own violations—which are in fact committed to ensure political control and enforced obedience.

Among strategies to exploit legal loopholes, amendments to institutional statutes and work regulations have become equally common. Having been amended, documents manufacture a facade of legality and function as highly effective instruments of political control, all the while violating established procedures and contradicting legal frameworks up to and including the Constitution of Serbia itself. Through them, punishment without explanation and retaliation without warning become seemingly legitimate methods of kneecapping cultural institutions and subduing workers through dismissals, elimination of positions, or removal from leadership. As the media outlet Mašina wrote on May 5, 2026: “Cultural workers are left without money and without jobs, exposed to mobbing and intimidation.”(Anastazija Govedarica Anastasijević, “Otkazi smene i pritisci:Sumorna slika kulture u 2026. godini,” Mašina, May 5, 2026, https://www.masina.rs/otkazi-smene-i-pritisci-sumorna-slika-kulture-u-2026-godini/.) Such intimidation often involves transferring workers to lower-paid and less visible jobs, for which they require additional qualifications, opening the door to fresh cycles of workplace surveillance and harassment as the search continues for supposed “infractions” justifying further repression.

 “The Chronicle of Repression”: Documenting Patterns of Violence

In response to the deepening crisis in Serbian culture and the arts, the Community of Arts and Culture (ZUK) was established in July 2025. Inspired by the student protests, ZUK functions as an informal, plenum-based initiative aimed at protecting the legal rights of cultural workers, combatting political repression, and preventing the complete collapse of cultural institutions. The ZUK Declaration—published on July 28, 2025 on the Mašina portal—outlines the baseline conditions needed to restructure both artistic production and the cultural field; it further advocates for horizontal participation and transparency in all decision-making. As the regional portal South-East European Culture (SEEcult) portal notes, “ZUK brings together people who oppose repression, political pressure, institutional collapse, and the economic punishment of the cultural sector.”(“Apel Zajednice umetnosti i kulture međunarodnoj javnosti,” SEEcult, May 11, 2026. https://www.seecult.org/apel-zuk-medunarodnoj-javnosti/.) Interested participants get involved by signing the ZUK Declaration or by joining regular Zoom meetings.

As a collective, the Community of Arts and Culture (ZUK) collaborates with other social initiatives, working with student and civic organizations to bring together social movements in the fight for freedom of expression against political repression. ZUK’s primary goals revolve around resisting systemic violence within cultural and artistic spheres by combating censorship and political pressure, while opposing the withdrawal of funding from politically undesirable authors. It further seeks to overturn controversial decisions concerning the status of cultural heritage sites (such as the complexes of the General Staff Building and the Belgrade Fair), and to protect cultural workers facing retaliation over their support for student and civic protests.

To achieve these goals, the Community of Arts and Culture organizes a wide range of activities, from public forums, surveys, and interviews with artists and cultural workers, to the creation and continual maintenance of an electronic database entitled “The Chronicle of Repression in Culture,” Chronicle of Repression in Culture, Serbia 2025 – Summary.pdf – Google диск documenting cases of repression in Serbian culture and the arts since 2025.(“Chronicle of Repression in Culture – Summary (November/December 2025),” https://tr.ee/1v4CT3enQs, https://linktr.ee/zuk.zajednica.)

By delineating every known instance of illegality action, workplace bullying, harassment, intimidation, and violence within Serbia’s cultural spheres, ZUK both keeps the international public informed of the current state of affairs and, moreover, mobilizes the cultural and artistic community as it mounts an organized resistance to the repression affecting its members. The ZUK “Chronicle” database meticulously documents the widespread degradation of culture and the arts in Serbia, the increasingly precarious position of cultural workers, and the gradual dismantling of national institutions of culture, either by privatization or complete closure. It uncovers how internal mechanisms of repression function through disregard for procedures, while also pointing to open violation of laws, tying external repression to cultural policies that determine the selection of institutional leaders and ideologically-motivated artistic agendas.

The degree of external repression goes even further: In cases considered threatening to the ruling regime, police intervention and direct force are often employed. This is reflected in bans on the use of public spaces, police incursions into cultural institutions, and verbal and physical attacks on cultural workers. All the while, speech that hails culture as a public good and artistic creation as labor deserving fair remuneration is silenced. The ZUK Chronicle demonstrates that a chronicle of cultural activities in Serbia is, in fact, a chronicle of the long-term systemic violence against cultural workers and the products of their labor, whether these take the form of artistic practices or efforts to preserve cultural heritage.

Ultimately, these cases reveal the destruction of culture as a public good and the appropriation of Serbia’s most vital cultural institutions, from theaters, libraries, galleries and museums, to institutions like Matica Srpska (MS) that have been essential to Serbia’s national tradition for more than two centuries, as well as to significant sites and protected monuments, such as the General Staff Building (Generalštab) in Belgrade.

Close-up of the General Staff building in ruinous state on February 21, 2026. Photograph by Iva Tanacković. Image courtesy of the author.

Lawfare: The General Staff Building Complex

The case of the General Staff Building complex encapsulates many of the issues highlighted in the Community of Arts and Culture Chronicle.(The complex was built between 1955 and 1965 based on the design of the famous Yugoslav architect Nikola Dobrović. It consists of two monumental blocks (Buildings “A” and “B”) that cascade down toward Nemanjina Street, symbolizing a city gate and mimicking the canyon of the Sutjeska River where one of the most significant battles in the Second World War was held, in which the partisans, with great sacrifices, won the victory.) The complex was severely damaged during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign. Although its buildings were conferred protected heritage status in 2005, plans for demolishing the complex were drawn up. The Serbian government announced in May 2024 that it had signed an agreement with Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to build a luxury hotel on the site. To realize this project, Serbia’s executive authorities sought to revoke the building’s protected heritage status by exerting pressure on both the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and the Belgrade Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments to sign documentation that would allow the site to be removed from Serbia’s Central Registry of Immovable Cultural Properties and Monuments.

Students and citizens hold a large banner reading “Ne damo Generalstab” (“We Won’t Give Up the General Staff Building”) during the “Mi smo živi zid” (“We Are a Living Wall”) protest on Nemanjina Street in Belgrade. The banner spans the entire width of Nemanjina Street. November 11, 2025. Photograph by Matija Vukov. Image courtesy of the author.

This unprecedented display of executive power triggered a series of civic and student initiatives dedicated to defending the General Staff Building complex. Its resulting addition to Europa Nostra’s list of the Seven Most Endangered Heritage Sites in Europe for 2025 cited political pressure, legal coercion, and investor-driven urban development as justifications. As a site facing a dire threat of destruction, the General Staff Building complex has remained under continuous observation by ICOMOS and other international heritage organizations. Despite international oversight, the Serbian government decided to remove the General Staff Building complex from the Central Register of Immovable Cultural Properties in November 2024. Two months later, Kushner publicly confirmed plans to construct a Trump Hotel on the site. Immediately, the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments declared that the complex could neither legally nor practically be removed from the Register, since the monument still existed. This roadblock is likely only a temporary obstacle until the regime identifies a new way around existing legal procedure.

Since the adoption of the new Law on Cultural Heritage in 2021, the current regime has repeatedly relativized, circumvented, or openly violated legislation designed to prevent abuses. One strategy, similar in nature to the appointment of “acting” officials, involves allowing the “preliminary protection” of a site to expire. Under Serbian law, a site under preliminary protection enjoys the same legal status as a permanently protected cultural heritage. In practice, however, governing institutions, whether as a result of limited capacities or political pressure, fail to take the steps necessary to grant a site permanent protection. As soon as protection is legally lost, the investors waiting for this protection to expire swoop in. Historic buildings are demolished almost overnight.

The case of the General Staff Building demonstrates the extent to which the Law on Cultural heritage governed by the actual political regime ceases to function in the realm of urban development and becomes the target of profit-seeking investors. Despite the refusal of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments to remove the General Staff Building complex from the list of protected monuments, on November 7, 2025, the Serbian Parliament adopted Lex Specialis, a law adopted outside of regular legislative procedure, enabling the building’s immediate demolition. No further justification was deemed necessary, since lucrative contracts were at stake. The ruling SNS party used its two-thirds parliamentary majority to pass legislation at the expense of cultural heritage and public interest. The New York Times reported on the adoption of Lex Specialis the same day, noting: “The legislation was drafted under a constitutional procedure that experts said was intended for use only in extreme circumstances.”(Lara Jakes and Alisa Dogramadzieva, “Serbia Lawmakers Approve Luxury Trump Hotel on Historic Bombing Site,” New York Times, November 7, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/world/europe/serbia-hotel-trump-kushner.html).

A protest in Belgrade, dubbed “We Are a Living Wall,” was immediately organized in response, as the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported: “Thousands of people gathered around the General Staff building (…) declaring that they would ‘defend this monument with their bodies.’ They drew a red line on the ground and formed a ‘living wall’ along it. Seventeen minutes of silence followed—one minute for the victims of the 1999 NATO bombing and sixteen minutes in memory of those who had died a year earlier during the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad.”(Tobias Zick, Süddeutsche Zeitung, “Minutes of Silence against luxury hotel of the Trump family,” November 11, 2025,https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/serbien-proteste-kushner-vucic-li.3336981.) The article’s title, “Minutes of silence against luxury hotel of the Trump family,” underscored a pointed problem, since the author went on to note that, “the message was clear: this protest was not only about history and the protection of monuments, but about something much deeper—the relationship between citizens and the state.”(Ibid.)

The state, for its part, reacted swiftly in an attempt to counter public accusations of law-breaking. On December 15, 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (JTOK) filed indictments for alleged irregularities related to the removal of heritage protection status from the General Staff Building against Minister of the Culture, Nikola Selaković.(An accusation was also brought against the following officals: Secretary Slavica Jelača (Ministry of Culture), Acting Director Goran Vasić (Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments), and Acting Director Aleksandar Ivanović (Belgrade Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments). Key witnesses in the proceedings included the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments’ former Director Dubravka Đukanović and Deputy Estela Radonjić Živkov, as well as Olivera Vučković, former Director of the Belgrade Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. All three witnesses had resigned from their positions after refusing to sign documents to revoke the protected status of the General Staff Building complex.)

Citizens and students are drawing a red line on the street in front of the General Staff Building to symbolically mark a border that must not be crossed to preserve the General Staff Building. Demonstrators stood behind that line/border to protect the General Staff Building with their bodies. (November 11, 2025) Photograph by Aleksa Stanković. Image courtesy of the author.

Photograph by Aleksa Stanković. Image courtesy of the author.

The indictment of Selaković set a new political precedent. For the first time in the fourteen-year rule of Aleksandar Vučić, a period already defined by numerous scandals and unresolved legal battles, criminal charges had been brought against a sitting minister. On the very same day the indictment was filed, Kushner’s investment company, Affinity Partners, announced its withdrawal from the planned project. The New York Times reported that, according to an Affinity Partners spokesman, “the company was pulling out because ‘meaningful projects should unite rather than divide and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the city of Belgrade.’”(Sharon LaFraniere and Lara Jakes,”Kushner’s Firm Pulls Out of Trump – Branded Hotel Deal in Serbia,“ New York Times, December 15, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/us/politics/kushner-trump-hotel-deal-serbia.html.)

In April 2026, JTOK pressed forward with the case against Selaković, while the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade (VJT) launched a parallel investigation against two of the prosecution’s key witnesses, Dubravka Đukanović and Estela Radonjić Živkov. This move was widely condemned as an effort to undermine the main case against Selaković and discredit its principal witnesses. Police raided the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, seizing documents in a blatant attempt to intimidate witnesses. At the same time, seemingly attempting to rehabilitate his public image, Nikola Selaković opened Serbia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. His trip as a cultural attaché to Italy provoked questions about how an indicted offical could leave the country, especially while the General Staff Building case remains to be litigated.

Theaters and Libraries: Internal Repression in Art Institutions

Theaters and libraries are among the most active, accessible, and democratic cultural institutions in Serbia. Their networks are decentralized and yet tightly interconnected. Unlike many other institutions of culture, citizens regularly use theaters and libraries, meaning that they are often the sole way the Serbian public learns about national and international cultural developments. Moreover, citizens have traditionally placed considerable trust in the values promoted by theaters and libraries. Their employees, including well-known actors, have overwhelmingly and visibly offered public support to the student protests. The inherently political nature of theater as an artistic practice combined with its ability to directly communicate with audiences has enabled theater to rapidly mobilize citizens in Serbia to resist injustice to a striking degree.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, theaters have come under intense regime pressure. Current and planned performances have been altered, canceled, and banned. The total number of theater premieres in 2025 and 2026 were nearly cut in half compared to 2024. As spaces akin to theaters, where dialogue and critical thought take place in public, libraries soon faced similar attacks. Since the beginning of the student protests, literary and public discussion forums have been banned in most libraries across Serbia, while future programs have been censored or cancelled.

The regime’s crackdown on theaters as sites of social criticism and political subversion did not begin with the Novi Sad tragedy and ensuing protests. The theater in the Serbian city of Šabac, which for a long time was the only municipality ran by the opposition parties, came under attack as early as 2020. Following a shift in the local government, the City Assembly of Šabac appointed new acting directors for most of the city’s cultural institutions, alongside new supervisory and management boards. At that time, the current director of the Šabac Theater, Minja Bogavac, director known for her socially engaged productions, was removed from office without explanation before the end of her mandate. Following this politically motivated dismissal, conditions at the Šabac Theater steadily deteriorated.

Later, during the student protests, the newly appointed acting director issued numerous formal warnings before ultimately dismissing several employees, citing their support for protesting students, wearing protest badges, publicly criticizing management, and drawing attention to institutional irregularities. In 2025, the theater’s program coordinator was dismissed after sixteen years of service for her support of the student movement, prompting colleagues to demand her reinstatement. During a demonstration on her behalf, the acting director locked the theater building and canceled a scheduled premiere. In May 2026, the season was cut short, with the theater blaming the early closure on renovations. Arguing that this was a pretext to suppress dissent, the Independence Trade Union and theater actors went on to form an informal collective, “Šabac Theater at the End of Its Rope.” Members of the Šabac Theater began performing This Is Not a Play, an independent production exposing threats to labor rights and freedom of expression within cultural institutions. Theater management, meanwhile, characterized these activities as an attack on the theater itself.

The takeover of theaters in Serbia operates according to a recognizable strategy to impede interaction between dissenting theater workers and their audiences. The appointment of Dragoslav Bokan as the head of the prominent National Theater in Belgrade clearly demonstrates a strategy of installing political appointees as a way to bolster the values of the regime and crush dissent at the same time. While Bokan holds a degree in film directing, he is far better known as the leader of the White Eagles, a far-right paramilitary organization founded in the 1990s and responsible for war crimes during the Yugoslav wars.

Following the fall of Milošević regime, Bokan spent years out of the public eye, only to re-emerge in 2023 as a member of the Governing board of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, the only public Faculty in Serbia where the student plenary assembly was physically expelled from the building. Bokan’s rise to political power only continued, reaching its peak in 2025 when he was appointed President of the Governing Board of the National Theater.

Employee unions rejected Bokan’s appointment and immediately launched a multi-day strike, which quickly garnered public support. Performances canceled due to the strike were staged in the streets during protests or as standalone free public events. Under the slogan “The People’s Theater Belongs to the People,” employees demanded that the institution be liberated from what they described as criminal governance and returned to its rightful owners, the citizens of Serbia.

Actors of the Serbian National Theater in Belgrade displaying the banner “Narodno je narodno” (“The people is the people”) on the brightly lit balcony of the theater during the protest “The National/People’s Theater Belongs to the People” on October 3, 2025. Photograph by Milica Pekić. Image courtesy of the author.

October 3, 2025. Photograph by Milica Pekić. Image courtesy of the author.

In response, Bokan brought private security personnel into the theater and soon introduced a new Rulebook on Work Discipline, threatening employees expressing political views with dismissal. Although this measure violated constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression, the Rulebook was implemented, ushering in blacklists and effectively barring certain artists, including the actress Hana Selimović and several directors, from participating in any productions. In September 2025, for the first time in the National Theater’s history, an employee, retired leading actress Dobrila Stojnić “Boba” was outright banned from entering the building by Bokan’s newly hired security staff. Numerous performances were canceled, including guest productions from neighboring countries, and replaced by productions whose treatment of national and historical themes echoed the regime’s revisionist interpretation.

These dramatic developments generated severe internal tensions, with employees warning of a state of siege prevailing within the National Theater. When, in early October 2025, both of its stages were closed for three weeks, purportedly for updates to the fire-protection system, employees claimed that the ongoing strike was the true reason. Not only had a physical altercation broken out between Bokan and members of the acting ensemble during this strike, but Bokan had unilaterally suspended operations in order to suppress further ensemble protests and public engagement.

The crisis escalated to the legal level in March 2026, when the Actors’ Union of the National Theater filed criminal charges with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime against Bokan, National Theater acting director Dragoljub Bajić, as well as aforementioned Minister of Culture Nikola Selaković. The charges cited material and moral damages inflicted upon the theater, particularly in connection with its closure. In May 2026, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality ruled that Bokan had engaged in discrimination based on ethnicity and sexual orientation during public television appearances. Bokan refused to comply with the Commissioner’s sanctions, further fueling demands from the professional community for his immediate removal; nevertheless, he remains in office to this day. The Bokan case illustrates the divide between politically motivated appointments and the resistance of an artistic community that fiercely defends the autonomy of cultural institutions.

This broader pattern of systemic repression is further demonstrated by the case of Milena Djordjijević, an employee of the National Library of Serbia. At “Zero for Culture,” a public rally organized in October 2025 by the protesting Drama Ensemble of the National Theater in Belgrade, she called attention both to threats facing cultural institutions and solidarity among cultural workers. She specifically raised concerns about a proposed three-story garage adjacent to the National Library, a project that endangered both the library and its surrounding historical zone, where construction is legally prohibited on heritage protection grounds. Shortly after appearing on the independent television channel N1 to discuss these threats to cultural heritage, freedom of expression, and institutional values, she was issued an amended contract transferring her from organizing literary and discussion programs to cataloguing books, essentially removing her from public-facing professional responsibilities. The future of the Library’s public outreach programs themselves remain in doubt, having been abolished immediately after the acting director took office in July 2025.

The three cases outlined here demonstrate a clear and coordinated strategy of conflict between management and employees. When cultural workers, seeking to preserve the public character of cultural institutions, expose the actions of politically appointed management and resist, the latter proceeds to privatize these institutions, obstruct their work, and undermine employee rights. While claiming to defend national interests, the state-appointed administrators of Serbia’s theaters and libraries actually deprive citizens of their right to culture while dismantling crucial networks of cooperation, trust, and creativity.

Usurping National Institutions: Matica Srpska and the Serbian Literary Cooperative

National institutions co-opted by the regime and its allies have become strongholds of a new political ideology whose value system derives from, on one hand, close ties with the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and, on the other, the creation of revisionist historical and cultural narratives. By appropriating institutions, the SNS regime acquires symbolic capital and a convenient alibi for its propaganda, which in turn allows it to present itself as the true defender of Serbian national interests across all spheres, including culture. Among the first institutions the regime wrested from serving the public  and, instead, compelled to serve a highly circumscribed notion of national interests, were the prestigious and longstanding Matica Srpska (MS)(Matica srpska (MS) was founded during a period of national awakening following centuries of Ottoman rule. Its primary goal was to bring the Serbian people into modern European trends while protecting their cultural distinctiveness. The word “Matica“ translates to “parent body”, “matrix”, or “queen bee”, symbolizing a central hive from which knowledge, literature, and education flow to enlighten the public. Founded on June 1, 1826, in Pest (now part of Budapest), it moved to its permanent headquarters in Novi Sad in 1864. Matica srpska operates through a multi-layered framework combining scientific research, extensive archiving, and the arts. It consists of Scientific Departments, The Library of MS, The Gallery of MS and Publishing Center which publishes Letopis Matice srpske [Chronicle), which was started in 1824 and stands as the oldest continuous literary journal in the world.) in Novi Sad, and the Serbian Literary Cooperative (Srpska književna zadruga/SKZ)(Srpska književna zadruga [SKZ] was founded by a group of writers and intellectuals who represented the Serbian intellectual elite of the era as an independent cultural institution. It also stands as the oldest active writers’ association and the second-oldest publishing house in the country, right after Matica srpska. The mission of the Serbian Literary Cooperation [SKZ], formulated at its founding in 1892, is rooted in the democratization of culture, public enlightenment, and the preservation of national identity. The choice of the word zadruga [traditionally a cooperative or communal family unit] was deliberate, since its founders created a cultural cooperative governed by its members. This allowed for high-quality books to reach remote villages, local school libraries, at minimal cost. SKZ aimed to systematically educate the Serbian nation through a carefully balanced editorial program which should preserve the domestic cultural heritage, present Western cultural values, and popularize science. The defining feature of SKZ’s legacy is its premier book series known simply as Kolo [“cycle” or “circle”]. Launched in 1892, it is the oldest continuous book collection in the Balkans and one of the oldest active book series in Europe.) in Belgrade. Both Matica srpska and Srpska književna zadruga were created at the time of the establishment of Serbian sovereignty after the Ottoman rule and the country’s turn towards the standards of Western democracy and culture. Both institutions were founded with the idea of ​​democratizing knowledge and enlightenment in Serbia as a newly founded state. At the same time, both institutions nurtured the national heritage, creativity and identity. With their usurpation, the current ruling regime in Serbia has canceled the entire system of values ​​on which both institutions were built and thanks to whom they lasted for so long. By appropriating that system ​​and presenting itself as its protector, the Serian Progressive Party has corrupted the long-standing tradition of the most important and long-lived Serbian cultural institutions that gained their reputation not only in the national but also in the regional context.With this usurpation, the legalization of fundamentally unlawful practices is on full display: open political censorship; cooperation restricted to a narrow circle of regime loyalists; and the redirection of arts and culture funds toward political propaganda.

The shift of Matica srpska toward becoming a pillar of support for the ruling regime of Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) was a gradual process of financial, ideological, and institutional integration that began in 2012 when Dragan Stanić  (pen name Ivan Negrišorac) was elected president of Matica srpska. Under his leadership, Matica srpska began to abandon its traditional stance of political neutrality and detachment from daily politics. The institution shifted its focus toward state-sponsored national narratives, aligning its cultural output with the priorities of the new government. The crucial phase of financially and operationally “taming” Matica srpska took place in 2016, when the SNS won the provincial elections in the province of Vojvodina. From this point forward, the organization’s funding became directly dependent on the political goodwill of local and provincial SNS officials—most notably the mayor of Novi Sad at the time, Miloš Vučević. The institution gradually opened its doors to ruling-party events, book promotions, and public appearances that favored the regime. Concurrently, any internal critical voices or dissent against the government’s policies fell completely silent.

These processes achieved their full effect through the repression surrounding the Matica Srpska bicentennial celebration and, especially, the appointment of its Honorary Governing Board. The creation of this body initially attracted little public attention, occurring at the height of the student protests. Its president is Aleksandar Vučić, and board members included the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Patriarch Porfirije as well as former Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević. Known for his inflammatory threats against student protestors and having been forced to resign as Prime Minister in January 2025, Vučević was nonetheless chosen to deliver the keynote address marking the MS bicentennial in February 2026.

The Matica Srpska bicentennial board, meanwhile, does not include a single writer or artist, with one notable exception: Ivan Negrišorac, MS president, formerly a neo-avantgarde poet. Negrišorac’s qualifications for inclusion in the board seem to have less to do with his literary acumen than his January 2025 decision to have students forcibly removed from the premises of MS after they interrupted an event with the loud recitation of early, rebellious Negrišorac’s poem from his collection The Rotten Apple (1981). In a landscape of lawless usurpation, the tragic and the absurd intertwine.

While Matica srpska has a more direct and homogeneous connection with SNS structures, the Serbian Literary Cooperative (SKZ) operates according to the model of “passive loyalty” whereby the institution maintains a semblance of academic autonomy, providing political peace and patriotic legitimacy to the regime of Aleksandar Vučić in exchange for regular funding that began in 2017 when SKZ was in a financial crisis. In exchange for financial support, the Cooperative’s leadership gradually phased out any internal or public criticism of the regime’s cultural and national policies. To mark the Cooperative’s 130th anniversary, Vučić hosted the SKZ leadership at the presidential palace. The Cooperative publicly thanked Vučić for his patronage, and he awarded them the Serbian Order of the Sretenje, cementing their mutual political alliance.

But what could seem merely absurd is, in fact, rooted in a foundational justification that derives from the circumstances of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and from Serbia’s unresolved prosecution of war crimes committed by its citizens. This legacy of impunity continues to dominate Serbia’s public discourse. A clear connection between the crimes of the past and the present can be seen in the events that preceded the large student protest scheduled for June 28, the Vidovdan holiday revered in Serbian nationalist circles. On the eve of that protest, the Governing Board of the Serbian Literary Cooperative (SKZ) chose to mark the occasion by promoting a poetry collection by Radovan Karadžić, former president of the breakaway “Serb Republic” (Republika Srpska), who has been convicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. By choosing to publicly send the imprisoned war criminal Karadžić a personally signed birthday greeting, the SKZ board sent an unambiguous message about its political preferences and leanings.

The cases of Matica Srpska and the Serbian Literary Cooperative have exposed the deep-seated repression and revisionism at work in the Serbian cultural realm, where pervasive censorship is inseparable from the country’s failure to meaningfully reckon with its wartime past. A culture of silence, fear, and forgetting actively hinders and suppresses the development of a culture of sincere remembrance.

The EXPO 2027 Website Project and the ZUK appeal: A Culture of Resistance in Action

EXPO 2027 Belgrade is an internationally recognized Specialized Expo – for the first time organized in the one of the countries of Western Balkans. Therefore, EXPO 2027 is presented by the Serbian ruling party as a project of national and strategic importance, prepared through procedures that imply legal exemptions for included projects from regular public oversight. Through special competitions of the Ministry of Culture and requests both to institutions and artists to link their programs to EXPO 2027, public funds, and the professional labor of employees in the cultural sector are being redirected towards a politically privileged project. EXPO27 has also emerged on the scene as renewed threat to both the General Staff Building complex and the protected Belgrade Fair (Beogradski sajam) area.(The Belgrade Fair [Beogradski sajam] is a massive exhibition complex. It is renowned both as a regional hub formajor corporate events and as one of the most significant architectural masterpieces of post-World War II Yugoslavia. Hall 1 is the crown jewel of the complex. It features a dome spanning 109 meters [358 feet] in diameter, which is certified by the Guinness World Records as the world largest prestressed concrete dome.)

The Community of Arts and Culture (ZAK) Declaration warns that, “Non-transparent projects such as the specialized exhibition EXPO27 (whose full documentation has never been publicly presented, although this is a requirement for such projects) serve as a cover for the misuse of public funds, while the entire cultural system is being alarmingly dismantled.”(“Declaration of the Community of Arts and Culture,” https://tr.ee/_9rR7jZP5K, https://linktr.ee/zuk.zajednica.) EXPO 2027 relies on a network of carefully selected collaborators to provide the regime a pretext for new cycles of self-enrichment, in a context where, despite numerous scandals, the regime cannot be meaningfully questioned, let alone legally prosecuted.

The Ministry of Culture in Serbia did not announce a single public competition for the allocation of funds in 2026. Instead, the Ministry decided to divert funds from the EXPO 2027 budget. As a result, a large competition was recently announced exclusively for the funding of artistic and cultural projects that will be part of EXPO 2027. The amount of funding intended for these projects greatly exceeds the amounts usually allocated to cultural and artistic work in Serbia. On the other hand, contemporary artistic and cultural projects that are not involved in EXPO will be left without any financial support whatsoever.

A group of deliberately anonymous researchers, activists, and citizens launched a website detailing the organization and execution of EXPO 2027. Aimed at international publics, the website traces the history of contracts, providing insights into the backgrounds of involved partners, especially those with histories of corruption, such as Milenijum Team, a company that investigative media networks, anti-corruption watchdogs, and political analysts heavily view as a textbook example of a business closely intertwined with ruling state structures in Serbia. This website informs and warns potential participants about the dubious nature of EXPO 2027.(“Beyond the EXPO 2027 Site,” 2026,  https://serbiaexpo2027exposed.com/beyond-the-expo-site/.)

In May 2026, members of the German political party Die Linke (“The Left”) drew on the aforementioned website to initiate a motion in the Bundestag, entitled “Risks of human rights violations, corruption, and security risks related to EXPO 2027 in Belgrade, and the consequences for Germany’s participation.” MPs submitted 32 questions to the German government regarding the Serbian regime’s record of corruption and legislative infractions, as well as violations of environmental and construction safety regulations, the latter a reference to the collapse of roof at the Novi Sad railway station. Almost simultaneously, ZUK issued an appeal to the international public, calling attention to systemic repression of culture and the arts in Serbia.(“ZUK Appeal from Artists and Cultural Workers in Serbia to International Colleagues,” Appeal from Artists and Cultural Workers in Serbia_ZUK_2026.pdf – Google диск) This appeal, like the ZUK Chronicle database before it, highlights EXPO 2027’s lack of legal and financial transparency, painting it as the culmination of corrupt and unlawfully institutionalized practices in Serbian cultural policy more generally.

ZUK has since begun to work on a second database, this time documenting forms of resistance in Serbia’s cultural, artistic, and media spheres to showcase and preserve positive examples of cultural workers and citizens united in to defend the common good. In this way, ZUK has organized both to resist repression and to garner support from international publics in the struggle against an authoritarian governance affecting areas beyond the cultural sphere.

2026: A Call for Solidarity

Since the beginning of 2026, political retaliation against academic, cultural, and journalistic communities has intensified. Even seemingly resolved cases of heritage protection, such as that of the General Staff Building, have been threatened again. The regime’s usurpation of institutions has become routine, leading to a growing number of politically captured cultural and artistic institutions. In special danger are institutions that commemorate the antifascist struggle of the Second World War and the Yugoslav era. In May 2026, the Government of Serbia unlawfully appointed an acting director to the Museum of Yugoslavia, a prominent museum that attracts over 200,000 visitors annually. Moreover, prior to this appointment, the mayor of Belgrade announced new construction projects in the museum park area, effectively threatening the museum with the type of investor-driven urban development that, as we have seen, operates outside legal constraints. Museum of Yugoslavia staff refused the appointment of any acting director if the appointee did not meet legal requirements.

Serbia’s National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) expressed solidarity with the staff at the Museum of Yugoslavia, warning that statutory regulations and institutional governance were being disregarded by the appointment of unqualified leadership without transparency and the reliance on illegal administrative frameworks. The violations seen since 2024 in the cases detailed above are now also threatening the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Terra Center for Fine and Applied Arts in Kikinda, as well as many other institutions of culture.

All these cases demonstrate that violating the legal protocols governing cultural and educational institutions in Serbia is no longer an exception but the rule. The goal is to erode and weaken these institutions and, in fact, to neutralize and dismantle them entirely. We can see how  the suspension of the rule of law that we identified as a catalyst for the student protests in 2024 has led to a vicious circle of systemic repression – primarily in the field of education and culture, but also in the field of media, legislation and healthcare,- that keeps eroding the rule of law.”

In a section entitled “Why we do this”, the authors behind the webpage EXPOsed issue a warning regarding the emerging dictatorship in Serbia.(“Why we do this,” 2026, https://serbiaexpo2027exposed.com/about-us/). Help is urgently needed: the stakes are high, and human lives are being threatened to a disturbing degree. Sometimes human lives are directly physically threatened, but in other cases the quality of life has eroded so much that citizens are left without jobs, health care and medicines, education, and a future. The time has come to be mindful of the fate of cultural workers and artists under authoritarian systems and, in doing so, to call the regime of Aleksandar Vučić to task. History shows that in dire circumstances, survival is impossible without solidarity. Since the start of the protests in Serbia, Serbian cultural workers have been waiting for the help they deserve: both in terms of a meaningful international response and in terms of the support of colleagues from around the world.

Tatjana Rosić

Tatjana Rosić is currently an Independent Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the “Dimensions of Europe” program at the University of Graz. She has been a  full professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, where she thought courses in literature, gender, culture and media studies, as well as a visiting professor at the Philological Art School, University of Kragujevac. She was dismissed from both positions during summer 2025 because of her support for the student protests. Her current research is focused on the culture of resistance in the context of (post-) Yugoslav studies as well as on gender, literary and cultural studies of the BSC region. She has been a member of several editorial boards, including Sarajevo Notebooks. Tatjana Rosić is the author of the following books: Ed. Representation of Gender Minority Groups in Media: Serbia,Montenegro,Macedonia, Belgrade:2015; (Anti)utopije tela: reprezentacija maskuliniteta u savremenoj srpskoj prozi (Dystopias of the Bodies: Representation of Masculinity in Contemporary Serbian Prose), Beolgrade:2014; Mit o savršenoj biografiji: Danilo Kiš i figura pisca u srpskoj kulturi (The Myth on Perfect Biography: Danilo Kis and the Figure of the Writer in Serbian Culture), Belgrade:2008; Ed. Theory and Politics of Gender: the Representation of Gender Identities in Literatures and Cultures of Balkans and Southeastern Europe, Belgrade:2008; Proizvoljnost dnevnika (The Arbitrariness of Diary), Belgrade:1994.