Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World

by Srdja Popovic

“Srdja,” Mohammed said bluntly, “we are all impressed with what happened in Serbia. But Egypt is very different. It can never happen there.” We weren’t fazed by Mohammed’s pessimism. “It can never happen here” is everybody’s first reaction, and I told Mohammed that I understood his doubts. The nonviolent activists in Georgia, I told him, had said the same thing when a bunch of young Serbs met them in Tbilisi just before they brought down their own dictatorship in 2003’s Rose Revolution, using Otpor!’s methods. And I had heard the same concerns raised in the Ukraine before Leonid Kuchma was toppled in the Orange Revolution in 2004, a year later in Lebanon on the eve of the Cedar Revolution, and three years after that in the Maldives, where pro-democracy activists ultimately deposed the country’s strongman. All of these revolutions were wildly successful, and all of them started with their organizers arguing that whatever happened in Serbia could never happen in their home countries.