The Department of Philology was founded in 1845 at the Serbian Lyceum, a predecessor of the University of Belgrade, as one of its first departments. Its foundation preceded the foundation of the later-introduced Departments of Slavonic Studies, Serbian Language and Serbian Literature at today’s Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. It changed its name several times.

In 1878, a decision was made to found the Department of Russian Language at the Great School. This Department was later developed into the Department of East and West Slavonic languages. In 1963, it changed its name and became the Slavonic Department; however, in 1990, it was finally renamed to the Department of Slavonic Studies, the name it has retained since.
The Department of Slavonic Studies is the central scientific-academic institution in Serbia, one of the oldest and greatest departments at the Faculty of Philology, and one of the largest Slavonic departments in general. The Department today studies the following languages (in the following order of introduction):

• Russian language and literature;
• Polish language and literature;
• Czech language and literature;
• Slovakian language and literature;
• Ukrainian language and literature.