Samuil Lehtțir
Samuil Rivinovici Lehtțir (October 25, 1901 – October 15, 1937) was a Moldovan poet, critic, and literary theorist. He came from a Bessarabian Jewish family and was born in Otaci. His early life was shaped by the shifting borders around Bessarabia and Romania.
Lehtțir studied at Cernăuți University in what was then Romania, but he left the country after opposing its union with Romania. He fled first to Ukrainian lands and, in 1926, moved to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) inside the Soviet Union. There he worked as a book publisher and journalist and became an important figure in local literary life.
In MASSR he helped found Răsăritul, a writers’ association, and edited Moldova Literară. He published poetry, translations, and literary criticism. At first, he followed Proletkult ideas, which urged destroying old cultural traditions to build a new proletarian culture. He argued that Bessarabian literature didn’t have a worthwhile native tradition and that Moldavian literature should grow from Soviet identity and patriotism. This sparked debate about Moldovan vs Romanian identity.
In the early 1930s Soviet authorities pushed writers to draw on local traditions, and Lehtțir adjusted his views. He supported Latinization of the Soviet alphabet, helped reintroduce samples of older Romanian literature into Octombrie, and became a leading figure in Moldavian theater. He wrote plays such as Codreanu (1930) and Biruința (Victory, 1933), and produced many poems and essays that often praised Soviet patriotism.
His political stances and language choices brought him into conflict with the regime. In 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD and executed on October 15, 1937, after being coerced into admitting false charges of espionage and opposing Soviet rule. His death was part of the Stalinist purges. He was later rehabilitated in the decades after Stalin, but for many years Soviet censorship kept details of his life from the public.
Lehtțir’s family included his wife, Yevgenia Solomonovna Khosh, and their son, Myud. After his arrest, Yevgenia was deported, and Myud was placed in an orphanage. In the 1960s his memory began to be revived, though much of his work remained difficult to access. Some of his writings survive in Moldova’s National Library, including rare copies of his work and a signed copy of Dimitrie Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae.
In July 2022, Lehtțir’s name was added to a votive cross in Chișinău to honor writers who were persecuted by the Stalinist regime.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:34 (CET).