Samuil Rivinovici Lehtțir (also rendered as Lehțir, Lehtțâr, Lekhttsir, Lekhtser, and Lehitser; Russian: Самуил Ривинович Лехтцир or Лехтцер; October 25, 1901 – October 15, 1937) was a Moldovan poet, critic, and literary theorist active in the Soviet Union during the interwar period.
Early life and education
Lehtțir was born on October 25, 1901, in Otaci, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Bessarabian Jewish family. His father was a craftsman known in Yiddish as "Ruvin-Chaim," and his mother, Dina Aizikovna Akerman, was originally from Briceni. The surname "Lehtțir" is of likely German origin, derived from lecht ("light") and zier ("ornament").
Following the October Revolution and the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania in 1918, the young Lehtțir opposed the union and reportedly fought against the Romanian military intervention. He fled to Soviet Ukraine, completing his secondary education at Mohyliv-Podilskyi, then returned to Romania to enroll at Cernăuți University. He was monitored by the Romanian Siguranța police as a suspected Soviet sympathizer and reportedly received a five-year jail sentence for communist propaganda, though he evaded capture.
Career in the Moldavian ASSR
In 1926, Lehtțir illegally crossed the Dniester into the newly formed Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), where he was employed by the State Publishing House in Tiraspol and the Moldavian Scientific Center. In 1928, he co-founded Răsăritul, an association of Soviet Moldavian writers, becoming its secretary in 1929. That year he published his first poetry collection, Poezii ("Poems").
Lehtțir contributed translations of works by Aleksandr Bezymensky, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, and Sergei Yesenin, and published translations from the Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi. He edited the magazine Moldova Literarî and later served as managerial secretary of the literary magazine Octombrie.
Literary and ideological positions
In 1930, together with Iosif Vainberg, Lehtțir published Întrebări literari ("Literary Questions"), a collection of essays reflecting Proletkult ideology. The work denied merit to the local literary tradition and argued that Moldavian literature had no usable inheritance, promoting a Sovietized Moldavian identity distinct from the Romanian ethnos. This position was later disregarded by the Communist Party, which in 1932 ordered writers to draw on local traditions. Lehtțir subsequently revised his views, incorporating samples of Romanian classics into his work.
Lehtțir was a founding figure of Soviet Moldavian theater. His historical play Codreanu (1930) was never performed in his lifetime, while his political play Biruința ("Victory," 1933) became the inaugural production of the Tiraspol State Theater on November 7, 1933. His published output included twelve volumes, three of which were elementary school textbooks.
Downfall and death
Lehtțir's public support for the Latinization of Soviet alphabets—which reduced differences between Romanian and Moldavian literary standards—was later branded a sample of Romanian nationalism by the Stalinist regime. He was arrested in 1937 and, according to research by historian Iurie Colesnic, tortured by the NKVD into confessing that he was a Romanian spy. He was sentenced to death by shooting on October 10, 1937, and executed on October 15, 1937, in Tiraspol. His wife, Yevgenia Solomonovna Khosh, was arrested and deported to the Gulag, and their son Myud was placed in a state orphanage.
Legacy
Lehtțir was fully rehabilitated after De-Stalinization in 1956, though Soviet censorship continued to obscure details of his biography, including deliberate misdating of his death to 1943. His name was inscribed on a votive cross in Chișinău in July 2022, alongside other writers described as victims of the Stalinist regime. His play Codreanu survives in a single copy preserved by the National Library of Moldova.
