Serbian “Otpor” and the Color Revolutions’ Diffusion

Filin et al. discuss the role of the Serbian youth revolutionary organization “Otpor” within the wave of color revolutions of the twenty-first century. The wave of revolutions in post-Communist and Middle Eastern countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century happened with the help of the Serbian urban youth organization “Otpor”, which successfully overthrew Serbian President Milošević in 2000. Otpor received help from the American government and Western NGOs. Then Otpor (later CANVAS) helped the revolutionary movements in many countries, teaching them the revolutionary techniques and tactics that had proved successful in Serbia. This intervention resulted in several successful revolutions in such countries as Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, the Maldives, Tunisia, and Egypt; however, there were also some failures. The authors present an explanation of how and why Otpor intervened in these processes (or even influenced the formation of revolutionary organizations), and what results this intervention brought about—both the successes (which remain limited) and the failures. The authors conclude that against expectations, the development of those countries after their revolutions was often far from optimistic hopes, and in the case of Syria the attempted revolution led to a brutal civil war. The revolutions were more successful in countries with semi-democratic regimes, while the movements failed where there were strong authoritarian regimes like those in Belarus or Iran. The authors also discuss about the factors driving the revolutions, besides “Otpor”’s activity, as the weakness of their regimes in combination with a relatively free environment (free media etc.), the desire of urban educated youth for faster development and radical changes, in some cases, the influence of Western governments and the organizations they supported, etc.