Donji Stepos

Donji Stepoš developed within Kruševac municipality in the Rasina District—a region whose historical significance far exceeds its current economic importance. Kruševac served as the capital of Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović before the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, making the surrounding villages participants in the final flowering of medieval Serbian statehood. The town's Lazarica church, built 1377-1380, exemplifies the Morava school architecture that developed in this region before Ottoman conquest.

The 2002 census recorded 484 inhabitants in Donji Stepoš—a population level that positions the village at the threshold where basic services (school, clinic, shop) become difficult to maintain. Like other settlements in the Rasina valley, Donji Stepoš developed around agriculture suited to the river bottomlands and adjacent hillsides: grain production, orchards, and livestock. The absence of industrial development in Kruševac's post-socialist period eliminated the urban employment that might have sustained rural populations through commuting.

Modern Donji Stepoš functions as an agricultural settlement within declining regional demographics. The Rasina District recorded significant population losses across 2011-2022 census periods, with rural villages experiencing the steepest declines. By 2026, Donji Stepoš's trajectory depends on whether the village crosses below viability thresholds—the point where the last school closes, the last shop shutters, and remaining residents are exclusively elderly landholders maintaining properties until death or relocation.