Homosexuality in Serbia was decriminalised in 1994. In Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina homosexuality was decriminalised in 1977.
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Yugoslavia
In 1937 Belgrade based daily newspaper Politika published news about young man from Central Serbia who arrived in Belgrade with his brothers to change his sex.
There are sources about homosexual Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia. Milovan Đilas in his war memoirs tells the story from Sandžak where one Muslim soldier was exposed as homosexual by other soldiers and Regional Secretary. Regional Secretary in doubt ask Đilas if he should "execute this freak", while Đilas remains in doubt admitting that at the time he did not know Communist Party of Yugoslavia practice nor anything was said about such matters by Marx and Lenin. At the end under common sense he concluded that "from such vices suffer proletarians, and not only bourgeois decadent" but that he can not have functions or be party member. Đilas says that he only later learned "that that homosexual, who in appearance was sheer manhood, was very brave and courageously fell in battle".
In 1990 in Hotel Moskva in Belgrade, which was popular gay gathering place in 70-ties, one gay and lesbian group began to organize meetings and in January 1991 they founded organization Arkadija.