Dobrotin
Leskovac's 144-village fragment—Dobrotin's 321 residents farm the Jablanica basin in Serbia's most administratively fragmented municipality.
Dobrotin exists because the Leskovac basin needed agricultural settlements—and because 'dobrotin' continues the Serbian pattern of naming places for quality. This village of 321 (2002 census) in Leskovac municipality sits in the Jablanica District of southern Serbia, part of the 144-village constellation that makes Leskovac the most fragmented municipality in the country.
The Leskovac basin—50 kilometers long, 45 kilometers wide, fed by the South Morava and its tributaries—has been agricultural heartland since the Neolithic. Slavic settlement in the 12th century, Ottoman conquest in 1454, and Serbian liberation in 1877 changed rulers but not the fundamental economy: grain, vegetables, and livestock from villages like Dobrotin feeding the regional market town.
Leskovac's textile industry earned it the nickname 'Little Manchester' in the late 19th century; by the 21st century, that industrial base has largely collapsed, returning the region to agricultural dependence. Dobrotin's 321 residents navigate this post-industrial landscape, farming plots too small for efficient mechanization but too established to abandon. By 2026, the village's future tracks the broader Jablanica question: whether EU agricultural subsidies or rural tourism can provide alternatives to continued depopulation.