Mali Iđoš
Template:Infobox Serbia municipality
Mali Iđoš (Serbian: Mali Iđoš or Мали Иђош, Hungarian: Kishegyes) is a village and municipality in the North Bačka District of Vojvodina, Serbia. The municipality comprises three local communities and has a population of 13,476, of whom 7,546 (55.92%) are ethnic Hungarians. Mali Iđoš (Kishegyes) village has a population of 5,464, of which Hungarians form an absolute majority of 88.3% or 5,046 people.
Name
The first part of the name of the village, "mali" ("little" in English), was given in contrast to the village with similar name (Iđoš), which is situated in northern Banat.
Inhabited places
Mali Iđoš municipality includes the following villages:
Ethnic groups (2002 census)
The population of the Mali Iđoš municipality:
- Hungarians = 7,546 (55.92%)
- Montenegrins = 2,812 (20.83%)
- Serbs = 2,357 (17.46%)
- Roma = 138 (1.02%)
Local communities with a Hungarian majority are Mali Iđoš (Kishegyes) and Feketić (Bácsfeketehegy). There is one local community with a Montenegrin majority: Lovćenac.
History
The name of Kishegyes was first mentioned in historical documents in 1476. The village became totally destroyed under Turkish occupation in the 16th century. It was repopulated in 1769 by 81 Roman Catholic Hungarian families from Békésszentandrás. The region is extremely well suited for agriculture and the village increased in wealth and population until the 1980s. In the 1990s the local economy was ruined and young people began to emigrate to Hungary. Today the rate of unemployment is appr. 30 percent, and the Agricultural Cooperative and the Commercial Company went bankrupt. After the end of the civil war in Croatia and Bosnia (1995-96) Serbian refugees arrived to Mali Iđoš (Kishegyes). There are ethnic tensions between native Hungarians and the Serbian refugees.
Sights
The oldest building in Mali Iđoš (Kishegyes) is the baroque Roman Catholic Church of St. Anne (1788) on the Main Street. There is an old Calvary, the obelisk of the Battle of Kishegyes and the ruins of the Pecze Mansion. The natural attractions are the River Krivaja and the imposing loessal walls of the Hills of Telečka.
