At the University of Belgrade, which was founded in 1838, the studies of the Russian language were introduced in 1878, when the Department of the Russian Language and Literature was opened. The first professor of the Russian language and literature was Platon Andrejevic Kulakovski, who wrote the first University textbook of the Russian language in Serbia called the Russian Reader (Руска читанка). Radovan Košutić is considered the founder of the Slavic Studies at the Belgrade University. His work, The Examples of the Literary Russian Language was published in 1910. Today, there are 429 students studying and 23 teachers holding lectures on Russian language, literature and culture at the Department of Slavic Studies of the Faculty of Philology. In 2013, Professor Piper was elected full member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. In the last ten years, the Department was the organiser of many international scientific conferences and symposia, including a number of symposia on the Russian diaspora. The Department’s work is closely linked to the Slavic Society of Serbia, which was founded in 1948, and whose basic aim is the promotion of the teaching of the Slavic languages (primarily the Russian), literature and culture as foreign in the Serbian community. The Slavic Society of Serbia is the organizer of now traditional international scientific events and seminars for the specialization of the Russian language professors, founder of the magazine The Slavic Studies and The Russian as Foreign Slavic Language, as well as of the edition The Slavic Library. Thanks to the «Russkiy Mir» Foundation, there is a Russian Centre and phonetic laboratory for the Russian language students at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. The Department of Slavic Studies has developed cooperation with the best known Universities in Russia.