One Оf The Leaders Behind Milosevic’s Overthrow: This Will Be The End Of Lukashenka

• 10.11.2025, 23:39

Srdja Popovic, co-founder of the legendary “Otpor!”, gave an exclusive interview to Charter97.org.

Srdja Popovic is one of the leaders of the Serbian movement “Otpor!”, which succeeded in forcing dictator Slobodan Milosevic to step down in 2000.

The success of the Serbian activists inspired freedom movements around the world, including Georgia’s “Kmara”, Ukraine’s “Pora!”, as well as the legendary Belarusian “Zubr”.

Today, Srdja Popovic heads the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which helps resistance movements fighting dictatorships worldwide.

Is it possible to change a dictatorship through peaceful protests? What did Belarusians fail to accomplish in 2020? Why are strikes and refusal to cooperate with the authorities so important? How do Belarusian protests inspire activists around the world?

Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of “Otpor!”, spoke about this and more in an exclusive interview with Charter97.org:

— I will start from the very beginning. I started my activist career at the age of 19 being a student protester in former Yugoslavia, then Serbia, which was ruled by Slobodan Milosevic.

I wasn't an activist by decision, I was more activist by necessity — like most Belorussians are now. I was playing guitar in a rock band and studying biology, so nothing to do really with politics.

In 1989, Milosevic came to power. The situation was dire: lack of freedoms, four civil wars with neighbours and a large wave of nationalism and hyperinflation — all combined changed the life of the whole generation.

My generation, which was born between 1969-1980, had two choices: to fight or to flee. Those of us who were stubborn enough, we stayed and fought. And this was how the really big student movement was formed. The first wave was in 1992. In 1998, we created an organization called “Otpor!” which is the Serbian word for resistance.

“Otpor!” started as a small group of student veterans from former student protests and then spread across the country within the range of two years, growing from 11 people to around 20,000 people, which is quite a lot for a country, which has 7 million people (Serbia at the time).

The movement was very effective in achieving four goals (which we later established as a kind of four pillars of addressing dictatorships).

— Could you define them?

— The first goal was capturing the grievances of the people and dislodge discontents, which existed with the Milosevic government. There was no real power towards the change because the opposition was very divided.

The second part was to build a system to monitor elections. “Otpor!” together with other civic organizations launched a large campaign, which mobilized, recruited and trained around 30,000 people to monitor presidential elections in September 2000.

Dealing with the opposition movement “Otpor!” was instrumental in persuading the opposition to unite behind one single presidential candidate.

Step number four was preparing for election fraud and making a system in place that organized large demonstrations across the country but also general strike in main state sectors together with labor unions, which persuaded Milosevic to concede to the results of the election.

Elections were held on September 23rd 2000. For a few days he tried to commit some kind of centralized fraud, which was the only way to do the fraud because we had people at and report from every ballot box in the country. The results were clearly showing that he lost in the first round of the election.

Throughout the pressure in general strike Milosevic was forced to concede to an elected president named Vojislav Koštunica on October the 5th, 2000. Serbia went into transition. Milosevic was delivered to Hague where he was tried for the war crimes against humanity in Bosnia.

2001-2003 I spent sitting in the Serbian national assembly having this idea that maybe we need to change the beast from the inside. I was involved in law making, and some policy building mostly in the environment. Throughout that time a variety of groups across the world have seen the documentary called Bringing Down a Dictator. That's how I take my career and educating actors around the world actually started.

Steve York producer from the US did a 60 minute documentary about “Otpor!”. It exists now, I think, in 15 different languages. People have seen this movie, they've seen the Serbian movement, they've got inspired and started getting in touch with us. And what started as random meetings with groups from Georgia, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Venezuela ended up turning into the organization called CANVAS, Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies. CANVAS was originally founded by me and another veteran of “Otpor!”, Slobodan Djinovic. What started as a two man show ended up being an educational center with 15 years of experience in building tools for activists to address different social issues.

— What were the main ideas there?

— The idea is that, for a change, you need three universal principles: the first one is vision and unity, meaning you know what you want to achieve and you know which parts of society you need to mobilize. You map the society, you talk to constituencies and, most importantly, you listen to these constituencies.

For example, in Belarus, the protests became serious when they expanded from the urban, highly educated, young, internet-savvy base. If Lukashenka is pulled by the workers in the factory, you can figure out that the things are serious. So, you hear these constituencies, you make them an integral part of the movement, because no movement will succeed if it's focused on a narrow part of the population.

The second principle is planning. CANVAS has a set of tools to cook movements with planning strategies starting from the grand strategy, like, where are we all pushing for.

Look at Myanmar, for example, where there has been a military coup. Obviously, the general strategy is to create a large level of non-cooperation at home, coupled with a large level of denying the legitimacy of the illegitimate coup government. That's the type of grand strategy that you discuss with the groups. And then you go into the targeting of certain institutions. Then you go into the pillars, then you go into the campaigns, then go into tactics. Tactics that work in the streets of Chicago are very different from the tactics that can work in the streets of Minsk, where you can get arrested only for wearing the flag.

The last but not least principle is non-violent discipline: how non-violence is more effective than violence, how you avoid any kind of violence outbreaks, how you push back against your opponent's propaganda. Because the common common tune of the authoritarians is that a) they would try to align you with extremists; b) they're going to try to label you as violent; and c) they're going to push you to the margins of the community saying, "This is the radical group, which wants the state burned down, and, by the way, I'm the state."

What is really the trademark of CANVAS (we have been working with people from 60 countries) is that you give people tools rather than directions. So, you teach them how to fish instead of telling them, "This is what you need to do." The reason for this is common sense. Foreigners never know the situation better than the people on the ground. So we would rather give tools to the people to decide what may be the elements of their strategy, and phase them with successful and failed case studies, instead of telling them, "This is how you need to demonstrate".

Unlike the very popular narrative, which was created by the Kremlin after the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine; unlike violent struggles where you can send "little green men" or bring 30,000 troops, nonviolent social change is not something that you can export or import.

It needs to be homegrown. It needs to be based on the grievances of local populations. It relies on local leadership. It relies on local strategies and it relies on local numbers — you cannot parachute a million people from one place to another. This is not how things are working.

— After Belarusians did not manage to get rid of Lukashenka in 2020, many say that dictatorships evolved in such a form that non-violent resistance does not work against them anymore. What would you answer to those critics?

— Let's address the strategy first. Historically, according to a study of 323 different campaigns from 1900 to 2006, published by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan “Why Civil Resistance Works” (one of the co-authors recently updated the data set to, maybe, 500 different campaigns) success rate of non-violence struggle varies between 40% and 53% of chances succeed, whereas the violent approach has half of that chance for success.

So, when you take a look at the history, the movements that can embrace a non-violent struggle as a direction, the ones which preached it, the ones that were avoiding violent confrontation with security forces had twice more chance to succeed than the others. History teaches us that non-violence is not only more ethical, but also more likely to succeed.

There are many reasons for this. Scientifically, people power movements tend to succeed when they reach a certain proportion of participation. So, when to take a look at the relationship between the numbers and the success: anywhere between 3% to 8% of daily active population gives you about half of the chance to succeed.

To make social change in a country the size of Serbia with a population of around 7 million you need around 56,000 daily active people. This is where you're looking at as a number. That's not people who support your movement. That's not the people who voted for you. These are people who are ready to commit their time every day to the stuff. It sounds a little, but it's actually really a lot. In order to reach these numbers, non-violence simply works better.

The way participation works throughout the world is based on what we call Risk Entry Point: how much you risk, if you want to participate. Take a look at the hitting pots and pans from the windows with a very low-risk entry point — action will involve people from different walks of life, age, sex, disabled people, kids grannies. Whereas marching on the streets and occupying the building where you will be facing the security forces, a lot of people get killed, get arrested, of course, attracts less people who are ready to take that level of risk.

You're facing an oppressive dictatorship — Belarus is one of the examples, but almost every single one has the same attributes — the place where they're superior to the movement is force. Obviously, these countries have very strong security apparatuses: FSB, KGB types of security services, trained policemen, sometimes military, ready to participate in a crackdown on the opposition.

Thinking of the battlefield, where you're open and your enemy is much-much stronger than you just doesn't make sense. So, if you need to fight Mike Tyson then the last place you pick up for this struggle is a boxing ring. You would probably like to play chess against Mike Tyson. From the common sense point of view it doesn't make sense because your opponent is stronger. From a participatory point of view it doesn't make sense, because if you increase the risk, then you decrease the participation. And from a historical point of view it doesn't have sense because historically violent movements are less likely to succeed.

There are many more arguments… Ethical one — if we start throwing stones, they will start shooting at us, people will get killed.

Speaking tactically about the Maidan-type of concentration tactics, occupying symbolic public places, this has actually been one of the far overestimated tools in the struggle.

— Why so? Did this tactic work in Ukraine?

— It comes from a large misconception of the Arab Spring where there were decentralized movements spreading around and then congregating in one symbolic public places like in Tunisia or Tahrir Square in Egypt.

Then, in New York, in Zuccotti park, there was a movement, built around this pretty naive idea that if we occupy a symbolic public place for long enough, then immediately M&M's chocolates will start falling from the sky. Then in Hong Kong there was occupation of the central business district Central.

What happens with these occupation tactics is that you put a lot of your resources and people in one very limited place for a very limited time. These are called tactics of concentration, whereas putting stickers across the city is called a tactic of dispersion. Concentration tactics are very likely to produce outsized results if they're used cleverly and around a certain timing. Let's say, we have a parliament making a decision, like in Ukraine — you concentrate your power in front of the parliament, you make lawmakers do what you want, or if they don't, there is a large price tag and then you build onwards.

So, the success of this has nothing to do with occupying the square. It has everything to do with targeting and picking the right timing. So when you take a look at why it works, you always look at which pillar was targeted and what timing was selected in order to achieve this. Occupying a place and just thinking that this is going to make your opponent resign is a pretty naive approach.

Large occupation of the military headquarters in Sudan was a useful and important tactic, but it was not the core of success. The core of success in Sudan was that the only way the military could maintain their financial interest was to get rid of Bashir [president of Sudan in 1993-2019]. After Bashir was deposed, the military easily crushed the occupation tactic, killing hundreds of people, throwing bodies into the Nile River, raping men and women equally.

When you take a look at what was the straw that broke the camel's back, it's very often the mass noncooperation tactics, which is disperse, which sucks of the government capability of giving soldiers salaries, which puts the country more into isolation. And which made people in the top of the junta in Sudan think whether they can manage the situation or whether they need to share power with civilians.

When the media shows you these squares with people camping and wearing helmets and you get this crazy idea that you connect this with success. This is one tactic, a very high-risk tactic, very difficult to maintain tactic and actually tactic, which tends to fail like in Hong Kong, more than it tends to succeed like in Maidan or on Tahrir square, or in Sudan. And when you take a look at why it succeeded, you go back to the planning and strategy and to pressuring pillars, to the timing of the operation and it is not just because people camped on the square.

This is a very naive approach. When you take a look at what you would advise to the people operating in a very oppressive environment, the tactics of concentration are not the first but the last thing. With tactics of concentration, you expose your numbers to your opponent. With tactics of concentration, you increase the capability of a violent crackdown. With tactics of concentration you raise expectations. If we need to meet every day on the square, and we had 20,000 people today, if we have only 10,000 tomorrow, people lose morale. And there may be a reason why the numbers are falling.

Tactics of concentration are an important part of the arsenal of tactics, but don't get over-excited with the idea that somehow occupying buildings for a long time will inevitably grant you victory. Your opponent doesn't necessarily need to come and kill you all. Your opponent may take the path of mainland China and Hong Kong: they could just sit on their fat a** and ignore you.

And what will you do the second week and the third week? You're 10,000 people — you need to feed them, you need to find them water, they need to collect garbage, they need toilets. I'm talking just about the logistics of the operation.

And then what happens is that the smallest number of the most committed people, who are very often the most radical, stay on the square and they start fighting.

— Based on your experience what did not work well in Belarus in 2020?

We built our movement in Serbia on errors. It was like a scientific method, but it wasn't science — it was life. In 1992, we occupied campuses. We were singing about peace. We had all the cool people, and actors, and public personas, and urban people. And outside of the campuses Milosevic was ruling the show with rural people being ready to go participate in his wars. This was where we learned that we needed to expand constituencies and geography.

In 1996-97, we were a lot. There were local elections — Milosevic stole them. We organized protests in 37 different towns and cities for 100 days marching every day. So, we learned a lot about tactics and the combination of internal and international pressure.

Milosevic eventually ended up recognizing that the opposition won local elections. However, the opposition split after four months. So, this is where we figure out that we also need mechanically to support the unity of the opposition. And we also learned in 1996-97 that the reason why we were able to win was that we had the results from all of the places. We had all the copies from every single ballot place. We raised the case with the OSCE and the European Union. We had the proof that we actually won and Milosevic was lying. And it was not the perception, it was the reality because we had documents and he didn't.

In 1998, we figured out that because Milosevic was on the ballot, there was no way we could replicate 1996-97. He was ready to sacrifice 30 mayors from his party, but he wouldn't be ready to sacrifice his own crown. And this is why we needed to figure out how, instead of marching in protest, how to increase the pressure after the elections.

We knew there would be elections. We knew the opposition if united would win the elections. We knew how to monitor — we learned this art. We knew the elections would be stolen — and we knew that the people would be outraged by the fact that they were stolen.

So, we combined the tactics of marching and protesting with an early organizational general strike. And the reason for that was that we figured out that he can either ignore or oppress demonstrations, but if the two largest coal mines in the country go on strike there will not be electricity. Serbia still produces, I think, 75% of its electricity from coal, so this is the crucial sector.

And then it was combined with a widespread strike in all kinds of different places. You go to a kiosk to buy cigarettes and there is a big sticker saying "Closed because of election fraud". And then on all of the levels, it was a coordination: somebody needs to know this and print this thing. So, this was not like, "Oh great, let's bring the stickers." It was like, "He is going to steal — we're going to close the f***ing country down. And this is what everybody will put in his or her store."

Unlike in Serbia, I don't know much about the planning process of the recent Belarusian protest, but it was a lucky charm that Lukashenka was defeated. It was not the wisdom of the opposition.

People think it was about the elections, but the protests actually started before the elections. Lukashenka was afraid of his mismanagement of COVID. People who participated in this first wave of demonstrations were using slippers — this is where he got spooked. And this is where he granted unity to the opposition by banning everybody from running and arresting everybody else.

So, the unity, in my opinion, was not the product of planning. It was more of the product of his paranoia triggered by the level of protest. He helped the opposition.

When the people woke up after the elections and figured out that they are the many and Lukashenka's crowd are the few — and that was the revelation moment.

The government was sitting on fear — and fear is very vulnerable, as you can see in Belarus. Fear is a tool abandoned by dictators. But Lukashenka is one of the last people standing who tries to rule by fear. People like Putin are more clever, they rule by apathy. This is a very different thing because you know, you break apathy, but the apathy has inertia. So you need to constantly break the apathy with small praise, with things like that. Because if you don't, the apathy comes back. With fear, it's a very different game. There is a day in time when people stop being afraid of you. And that's the end.

This bubble of fear just broke out. People figured that out that Lukashenka was spooked and afraid. Because all of these dictatorship regimes, as my friend says, "They always look stable until they don't".

In Serbia, there was a movement which had a branch and 3 people in every neighborhood. So, all you need to do is press the button — and there were little bees that were doing things that were connecting with the people and spreading information. Everybody knew the strategy. Everybody knew we needed to do the general strike.

And taking a look into this moment in Belarus, the opposition was kind of, "WOW! We won the elections! What the heck is happening?! This is impossible."

— Apart from mistakes in planning, what else did not work?

— The mistake number two was that there was no parallel vote tabulation. There was no physical monitoring of the ballot boxes. There was no timely presentation of accurate results. You can argue that the opposition wasn't able to control; you can argue about the conditions, but what I'm saying is that was lack of. In case you cannot get to the ballot boxes, you do exit polls — there are ways to organize.

So, there was no parallel vote tabulation, no way to prove that you won — no legitimate way to trigger what you really need, which is the second round of legitimate elections — the only way you can, in my opinion, figure out how to end up this crisis: to have a legitimate elections with international voting monitoring, including voting monitoring from Russia, and then then proclaiming the legitimate results.

And I think in that type of election Lukashenka wouldn't stand a chance. And this is where the strategy comes in. So if you know you can win, you need to capitalize on this thing. And in order to capitalize on this thing you need to have some kind of policy. And this should be coordinated between the players which are inside the country and the players which are outside of the country.

The whole international effort to delegitimize Lukashenkа actually went very well. Nobody cares about that guy, an illegitimate oppressor, except maybe, people around him and his megaphones in the national media — everybody else knows that he's clinging into power by his iron nails.

Unfortunately, he has the nails of iron. So, he's clinging to power really strongly. Internally, there was no organized movement, there was no organization that was capable to execute the mass noncooperation tactics.

The level of support, the level of braveness, the level of cool, the level of low-risk tactics, like snowman protests — they were tremendous. I can give every credit in the world to the creativity of the Belarusian protestors during that period. We use probably 15 or 20 case studies of how the flag was important for building the different narrative.

From the identity point it was great. From a tactical point it was great. But there was no organization and there was no policy strategy.

So when you ask me what was lacking: real unity of the opposition before the elections, control of ballot boxes, creating documents, which give you a legitimate fight domestically and internationally, plan for what you do when Lukashenka says that he won the elections.

If you asked somebody before the elections in Belarus, what would Lukashenka do if he lost, what would you tell? "He will concede and go retire and play hockey"? Come on! Everybody could expect that he would say, "No-no, I won. With 178%." So, you could predict what he's going to do and there was no plan what to do when he did what you knew he was going to do.

Lack of post election organization and strategy and then a very good creativity inside and international delegitimization outside of Belarus, which would enable you to get to the negotiation point, to exploit his weak points, to make him call for the new elections, to make elites around him thinking whether he is expired, to make mother Russia thinking, "Maybe we should apply the Armenian scenario. The old guys are losing. We should embrace the new guys".

You want to play this — you need to play this strategically. This is a strategic non-violent struggle, this is something people can learn from. And there were the cases in history which succeeded and failed, and we need to apply successes and learn from failures.

— Did you see some things which were useful in Belarusians protests?

— Several things worked pretty well. Moving and being unpredictable. So, going from the marches on the street, which were met with police force, to the smaller hit-and-run, how we call them or flash-mob events. Then spreading into buildings and then the flag.

The flag was a key tactic. And very often you need this type of symbols. Using the flag was not only the way for people to physically brand themselves. It was also a way to build a new identity. And I think if you can take one big victory, which — despite the fact that Lukashenka will probably cling to power for a little while — cannot be taken from the table anymore, this is that Belarusians rediscovered themselves. They rediscovered themselves as a proud nation, leaning for democracy, as opposed to being in this post-Soviet limbo.

People pick various paths. You can take a look at places like Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia. They took the path into the European Union and rescheduled their economies. Then, there was a bulk of countries which missed the Cold War.

Milosevic was the most radical example of these Balkan leaders. When they saw the Cold War ending, instead of saying, "We need to go to the world. We are the country of 23 million people. Let's see if we can be an interesting market." Instead of that, they say, "We want to be Tito. But because we can not preserve this big multinational country, we're going to create three or four small Titos, and everybody will rule by dictatorship."

So, the leaders decided they would rather live in small shitty ethnic dictatorships. And, of course, the only way to maintain their power was to start ethnic wars with others because that cements you in power. When there is a war, nobody is talking about the economy or democracy. The result: four civil wars, thousands of people dead, 700,000 refugees, and one big promising country falling into six entities. That's the historic consequence of this stupid decision not to look at where history is going, but to reinvent history.

Lukashenka was a different guy: he thought he could refrigerate Belarus in this limbo and preserve some elements of communism. It was like, he said, "This social contract between the government and the people is working not bad." And also because of the nature of the Belarusian economy, its relative independence from the common markets, this was also economically feasible. And because of his popularity it was politically feasible for a certain number of years, but you cannot stop history. You need to pick direction: you either democratize or you Putinize. And there was a moment in time when this became unsustainable, when many things coincided with the incapability of the government to respond to the pandemic.

Very often the natural disasters are the triggers, because when you have the government that is telling you every day, "This is the strongest government in the world." And then you have the moment in which this is tested and people see that it's actually a Potemkin village.

But coming back to the white-red-white flag, it's not only about the tactics — it's what it symbolizes: it symbolizes the newly invented Belarusian identity. It kills the state narrative that if you are against Lukashanka you are not patriotic. No! You are patriotic!

He is not more than a puppet of his Kremlin master. He had the episodes of tough love with him, but now he welcomes Russian troops, "Let's invade Ukraine together!" What does it tell the people of Belarus? — they live in a colony! Mobilizing people against colonialism is a very powerful trigger. So it's not only about democracy, it's not only about suppression, it's not only about elusive things, like freedom and free and fair elections. It is about whether we are a colony.

The largest colonial powers, like the UK, were absolutely incapable of dealing with this. The reason: colonialism is not natural. People don't like to be colonial slaves. Flag epitomizes this — this is where the new identity comes in.

Then, the variety of tactics of dispersion, labeling buildings, making snowmen protests. The way the police were forced to de-decorate the Christmas trees in neighborhoods decorated with red and white - that really put the tears in my eyes and smiles in my face. The way in which people were using songs like during the Singing Revolution in Estonia — but it's not about the tactics, it is about the Belorussians inevitably reinvented themselves. The way they are ruled now is just delaying the inevitable.

— Are there opportunities for victory in Belarus, in your view?

— You very often see these moments of darkness, but the night is the darkest before dawn. The fact that they need to use this level of oppression, and the fact they need to maintain peace by succumbing themselves to the foreign master puppeteer, the unprecedented presence of Russian troops in Belarus — that tells you one thing: Lukashenka is weak. He knows he is illegitimate. People around him know he is illegitimate.

It is about finding the strategy to capitalize. Looking historically, one possible way is to use numbers, like in South Africa, you had this apartheid government. That government was forced to go for elections in a wide combination of internal boycott of everything produced by the companies that were paying in the budget and a large international isolation support sanctions, most importantly, divestiture of a large British bank Barclays from South Africa.

There were no protests, as they were met with violence by the apartheid government. Thousands of people were killed. Then, the movement made a desperate decision to form what was called The Spear of the Nation, a little guerrilla group that started blowing bridges and things of that kind. That is why Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life prison sentence, because he was the co-founder of this group.

But eventually, the combination of internal tactics of non-cooperation worked: finding every single dollar that the government can extract from the people and deciding not to buy this thing, whatever it is. If that means clothes, we will sew our own clothes, if that means cigarettes, we are not going to smoke. And then leveraging this pressure to an international level to the extent that the government couldn't fund its own oppression. This is what happened in South Africa. This is what triggered the elections. Nelson Mandela became president.

Belarus can be a democracy in the long term only if it elects its government democratically. And I strongly believe that if there were free and fair elections or, at least internationally monitored elections in Belarus, Lukashenka wouldn't stand a chance. It is disputable whether he would even run, or he would hand pick some kind of guy to run instead of him.

Unlike the downfall of the regime, the elections are far easier to communicate and create an international coalition. You will need some kind of international coalition that he can surrender to in this particular case.

Milosevic technically surrendered to the Russian foreign minister. He surrendered to the fact that he lost the election, the country was on general strike and his own military police wouldn't listen to his orders, but officially, he surrendered to the foreign minister of Russia. He said he did so in the interests of the country - they need this golden parachute type of thing.

Take a look into the long-term, build from successes or the countries, which were in similar situations, do not get desperate in the face of wide oppression and understand that oppression and more troops and more foreign troops are actually a sign of weakness, not strength.