In the fall of 1899, Kočić enrolled into the University of Vienna's Department of Slavistics and began writing prose. His first short story appeared in the publication "Bosanska vila" (Bosnian Fairy) in 1899. Soon, Kočić began taking part in South Slavic student demonstrations on campus, demanding freedom of the press and assembly in Bosnia. Despite living in the city and being well educated, Kočić took up the cause of the Bosnian Serb peasants. Most peasants were "kmets", or serfs, and did not own the land they tilled. Though they were no longer legally referred to as serfs from 1878 onwards, their farmland remained the property of the Muslim landowning class, which emerged from the Ottoman withdrawal largely unscathed. Kočić helped produce memoranda outlining the protesters' demands, which attracted the attention of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Kočić understood that his political views could lead to restrictions being imposed on his liberty, as demonstrated in a letter he wrote Vukmanović in 1901: "I shall spend perhaps the greater part of my life in jails and prisons, because all us students are going to begin a struggle against the , who plunder our nation, deprive it of its freedom, and destroy its happiness."