May Day Celebration by the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia

Belgrade, May 1st, 2025 — The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) and the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) traditionally marked International Workers’ Day with a central gathering at Dimitrije Tucović Square in Belgrade.

The event featured speeches from the General Secretary of NKPJ, Comrade Aleksandar Banjanac, as well as SKOJ Secretariat members Comrades Ilija Živković and Mateja Grujičić. Comrade Vukašin Žunić, First Secretary of the Student Front, also addressed the assembled crowd.

A wreath was laid at the monument to Dimitrije Tucović, with the participation of the ambassadors of Cuba and Venezuela to the Republic of Serbia.

NKPJ and SKOJ also issued a May Day Proclamation, which we present below in full:

MAY DAY PROCLAMATION OF THE NKPJ AND SKOJ

Dear comrades,
Working people of our homeland,

The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia wish you a happy International Workers’ Day and a day of proletarian solidarity!

On this May 1st, International Workers’ Day, we stand shoulder to shoulder with workers across the globe in the fight for a dignified life, a just society, and liberation from exploitation!

We express our solidarity with all working people around the world—those who produce all the wealth on this planet and without whom the world could not function. Standing in opposition to this progressive force of labor is the world of capital and imperialism, which grows more monstrous by the year. We particularly stand with the people who endure the harshest oppression at the hands of imperialism: the people of Gaza and Palestine, the people of Ukraine who suffer in a bloody war incited by Western imperialism and executed by Banderite fascists. We also stand with the people of Cuba, suffering under a criminal blockade, and all those facing draconian sanctions imposed by Trump’s imperial empire in its arrogant display of hegemony.

We remember all progressive people and communists worldwide who gave their lives fighting for a better future. Among them are the anti-fascist fighters of WWII, who eighty years ago broke the back of Nazism and fascism.

Every May 1st, we honor the heroes of the workers’ movement who gave their lives for the eight-hour workday, workplace safety, social justice, and freedom for all working people. Their sacrifices compel us to continue the struggle they began. Among them were also the progressives and communists of our own homeland—heroes like Dimitrije Tucović, born on this very day, whose legacy we especially celebrate. Like us, he marked May Day through workers’ demonstrations and rallies, which eventually became a national holiday exactly 80 years ago.

Today, our people once again face injustice, poverty, and humiliation. There is nothing to celebrate—but every reason to be angry and defiant. Serbia has become a land of cheap labor, where workers’ rights barely exist; a country at the bottom of Europe in wages, yet near the top in class inequality; a nation that no longer controls the natural wealth for which past generations shed blood. The plunder of public property continues: the General Staff building is being shamelessly gifted to the Trump family, Hotel Jugoslavija has been demolished, and the privatization of Belgrade Pharmacies is underway.

Foreign capitalists receive lavish subsidies to exploit our people in degrading working conditions for starvation wages. No wonder Serbia is the sickest nation in Europe, where even young people collapse from exhaustion and stress in the streets. Serbia has one of the lowest minimum wages on the continent, no future, and sees tens of thousands emigrate each year—coupled with a dire natural population decline, the situation is clearly critical.

The bourgeois ruling class continues to degrade the dignity and living standards of the working people, serving the interests of the capitalists while remaining blind and deaf to the needs of the working class. The same goes for the bourgeois opposition, whose only interest is to seize power so they too can serve the same capitalist masters.

Comrades,
Serbia is in the midst of a deep political crisis, a battle between two bourgeois factions—both equally opposed to the interests of the working class. That is why we call on the working people of our homeland not to take sides in the false battle between "gas station owners" and "butchers," but to unite in the fight for their true interests.

The NKPJ calls on all workers, peasants, the unemployed, students, pensioners—all oppressed layers of society—to unite in a common struggle for a truly just, free, socialist future!

For a society where no one lives off the labor of others!
For solidarity among nations!
Long live May 1st!