When, on 10 February 2014, we crossed the frontier between Serbia and Bosnia aboard a tiny Eurolines bus, one of our fellow passengers, a young man in his late teens, was asked to step down from the bus and disappeared into the police station. The officers had suspicions he was part of the crowd that had gathered in front of the Mostar Canton government building on 7 February as it went up in flames and wanted to know more about it. After a 30-minute interrogation, they finally let him go. As he stepped back into the bus and it was clear he had definitely made it across the border, his joy erupted. Of course he was there! Like in Tuzla, like in Sarajevo, people attacked and burned down the government building, and it was a wonderful sight! Even better, in the divided city of Mostar, he saw people from both sides, Bosniaks and Croats, hugging each other in front of the burning building! He was hoping to be back in time for the plenum; he was constantly receiving text messages from his friends who were now in the streets in Mostar, and he could not wait to be there.

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A lot of people in February had unrealistic expectations. A majority of them thought that deep and far-reaching changes were possible and were going to happen in this short period. It was unrealistic to hope that a bunch of angry people in the streets could undo the developments of the past 30 years. I always recall this old lady with a red scarf telling us, very angrily: "If this fails, I will never forgive you". At the time I thought, "What are your criteria for failure?". You could sense that people really wanted a revolutionary change; a lot of people expected something very radical to change. But for a number of us who have more political experience, we knew that nothing so radical could really happen. (Interview with a plenum organiser, Sarajevo, October 2014)1

There will be nothing here without revolution! What burned is zero, believe me. I repeat: the second period will be bloody, bloody in Tuzla! It started in Tuzla, it must finish in Tuzla. There is no other way. Look at the politics: all the same nationalists stayed in power and kept their positions. (Interview with a worker of the Dita factory in Tuzla, member of Solidarnost — a new independent union — October 2014)

As they had long been doing every week, on Wednesday 5 February 2014 the workers of several privatised factories of Tuzla took to the streets to demand payment of months of overdue wages and social contributions. Most of them had been fighting for years, occupying their factories; several hunger strikes had even been undertaken, to no avail, and the weekly Wednesday demonstration seemed unlikely to make a difference. But on that day they were joined by several hundred young people. Together they tried to storm the building of the Tuzla canton government. The demonstrators managed to rush inside before eventually being forced back by the police. As clashes occurred, some workers were beaten up, and these images, captured on camera, went viral.

By the next day, demonstrations of solidarity were occurring in Tuzla, and also in Sarajevo and Mostar. On Facebook, groups like UDAR in Tuzla, and the page "50,000 For a Better Tomorrow", called for massive protests in the coming days. On 7 February, thousands of people turned up to demonstrations in all the major cities of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Sarajevo and Tuzla, after violent clashes with the police, people stormed the canton government buildings and set them on fire. In the divided city of Mostar they also burned the headquarters of the main political parties.2 In panic, the canton government ministers of Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica resigned.

In the following days, people started to organise "plenums" (assemblies) to discuss what to do next, and to formulate demands. Many more turned up than expected — several hundred in Tuzla and Mostar, often more than one thousand in Sarajevo. The plenums quickly became the main locus of the movement as the protests dwindled. Unlike in the Occupy and Indignados movements, the assemblies did not take place in the streets but in separate buildings. At each session, in each city — more than 20 cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina had their own plenums — long lists of demands were formulated, among them the end of privatisations and of golden parachutes for politicians, and the setting up of a "government of experts".

A recurring theme in slogans, in graffiti and within plenums, was the rejection of nationalism. In the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, "nationalism" — and therefore anti-nationalism — refers to a very specific