Ravno Selo is a typical village in the Bačka region; it is the furthest village from the municipal center of Vrbas, although it is well connected to the western parts of Bačka, and the Republic of Croatia. It is situated between Kulpin and Zmajevo, or as the editor of the Bačka County monograph, Samu Borovszky, would say, “Stare Šove (which was the name of the village until 1946), sits in the Novi Sad region, between Kulpin and Stari Ker (Zmajevo). According to legend, the village was founded in the 15th century, and the first recorded documents about the settlement date from 1484 and 1502. Egeriš Idečkij, a Hungarian nobleman, was one of the area’s proprietors, and the river Jegrička, which runs through the village, was named after him.

The village’s origins can be traced back to three settlements that eventually merged into one village, Ravno Selo, where it still stands today. Those „villages“ were: Male Šove, Alpar and Paška. The village of Šove-Ravno Selo, as well as the entire Bačka region, belonged to the Hungarian state until the Battle of Mohács in 1526 when it was annexed by the Ottoman Empire. They were once again a part of the Hungarian state after the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, and therefore the village of Šove. Since 1918, the Šove village, as well as Bačka, have been incorporated into the Serbian state. The demographic structure and name of the village in Ravno Selo were changed after the Colonization organized in 1945. Today, this „typical Bačka village“ has a population of just over 3,000 people, the majority of whom are Serbians, as well as Montenegrins, Macedonians, Hungarians, Croats, Roma, and others.

Boro Vojinović,
Curator-historian