Rezeshi

(răzeşi), proprietors (co-owners) of land in Moldavia from the 16th through 19th centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, most rezeshi owned small patrimonial estates and lived communally on the basis of shared landownership. Until the late 16th century, shared landownership in Moldavia combined the communal use of land with private property rights to a hereditary share of all types of land owned by the village. Landownership by rezeshi who had become peasants was similar to shared landownership in the Russian North, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Walachia. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the rezeshi were mainly peasant shareholders. The breakup of the shared landownership system was hastened in the mid-19th century by the social stratification of the rezeshi. Landowner-ship by the rezeshi became vestigial by the early 20th century.