The Department of Slavonic Studies was established on 1 September 1995 following a decision by the Scientific Board of Masaryk University on a proposal made by Professors Adolf Erhart and Radoslav Večerka. The aim was to create a compact Slavonic Studies programme, to consolidate the Slavonic philology programmes that in the previous decades had been part of various other departments and units at the Faculty of Arts, and to concentrate research in one place. In the background there were also questions about the overall image of the field and preserving “small disciplines,” that is, the teaching of the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of primarily the South Slavonic nations and the Sorbs, and the nations of Poland and Ukraine. Although the latter two countries cannot be considered small in terms of population, the interest in studying their philologies was not large.

Slavonic philology, in the original meaning of the term as a field including both linguistic and literary disciplines, was one of the founding fields of study at Masaryk University. As the university developed, Slavonic disciplines were pursued in various institutional settings, for example, in the interwar years at the Slavonic Seminar, or later, beginning in the 1950s, within an evolving cluster of departments that bore different titles and covered other fields than just Slavonic philology. Due to the exclusive position of the Russian language after 1945, Slavonic studies in the broad sense were pursued as part of not only Czech studies and Russian studies, but also history; literary, theatre, and film studies; and other fields. Slavonic studies at Masaryk University has had an illustrious history. Some of the earliest Slavicists to call Masaryk University home include Václav Vondrák (1859–1925), Stanislav Souček (1870–1935), Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), František Trávníček (1888–1961), Frank Wollman (1888–1969), Sergei Vilinsky (1876–1950), Bohuslav Havránek (1893–1978), Josef Kurz (1901–1972), and Václav Machek (1894–1965). They were followed by Josef Hrabák (1912–1987), Jiří Krystýnek (1913–1991), Arnošt Lamprecht (1919–1985), Jaroslav Mandát (1924–1986), Jaroslav Burian (1922–1980), Mečislav Krhoun (1907–1982), Vlasta Vlašínová (1925–1977), and Roman Mrázek (1921–1989). In later years, students of these distinguished Slavonic philologists, themselves renowned and internationally regarded linguists and literary scholars, taught at or were otherwise associated with the Department of Slavonic Studies: Danuše Kšicová (1932–2017), Jiří Jiráček (1924–2013), Radoslav Večerka (1928–2017), Jarmil Pelikán (1928– 2017), Krystyna Kardyni-Pelikánová (b. 1930), Stanislav Žaža (1929–2018), Miroslav Mikulášek (b. 1930), Ivan Dorovský (1935–2021), and Jana Jelínková (b.1936). The succeeding generation of prominent internationally renowned scholars at the Department of Slavonic Studies includes, above all, literary scholar and broadly focused Slavicist Ivo Pospíšil (b. 1952), founder of the Department of Slavonic Studies and its long-serving head (1995–2022); and literary scholar Josef Dohnal (b. 1954). Since the department’s founding in 1995, subsequent generations of Slavicists have established themselves, many of whom still work at the department today (see https://slavistika.phil.muni.cz/o-nas), and have contributed to and continue to contribute to the growth of Russian studies, Polish studies, Ukrainian studies, South Slavonic philology, and Balkan studies. A more detailed history of the department is presented in the publication Ústav slavistiky. Východiska a perspektivy (Brno, Masarykova univerzita 2019, https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/index.php/cs/handle/11222.digilib/140904).

From its beginnings, the department’s profile has been defined by its combination of a philological focus with an area studies approach foregrounding the history of Slavonic nations, contacts and relations between the Czechs and other Slavonic nations, and cultural studies in general. The department has undergone many changes throughout its history. For years, it offered as many as sixteen bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes and seven PhD programmes, including faculty-wide interdepartmental master’s and PhD programmes in comparative literature, of which the Faculty of Slavonic Studies served as the home department. It also provided instruction at all three degree levels in philology–area studies, Balkan area studies, and Ukrainian studies. The number of programmes was gradually reduced over time, in large part due to the reconceptualization of teaching philological fields of study in which there is now a great emphasis on area studies. Today, the department offers four bachelor’s degree programmes and three master’s degree programmes (see https://slavistika.phil.muni.cz/o-nas/profil-ustavu). Until 2026, it also ran four PhD programmes. On 1 February 2026 all PhD programmes at all philological departments were consolidated into two faculty-wide programmes: Literary Philology and Linguistics. As a result, the PhD programmes offered by individual departments have been eliminated.

The department has published or collaborated on publishing three printed journals (Opera Slavica, Slavica litteraria, Novaya rusistika) and one online journal (Proudy). Since 2023, Opera Slavica has been the only journal published by the department. Its mission is to create a broad communication platform, covering all the Slavonic languages and literatures, for research on Slavonic philology that often extends beyond this field into translation studies, cultural studies, and other humanities and social science disciplines and to cultivate core themes and new methodological approaches in European Slavonic studies.