Samuil Rivinovici Lehtțir, also rendered as Lehțir, Lehtțâr, Lekhttsir, Lekhtser, and Lehitser ( or Лехтцер; October 25, 1901 – October 15, 1937), was a Moldovan poet, critic, and literary theorist. Of Bessarabian Jewish origin, he rejected Romanian nationalism as a youth, and fled to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Returning to complete his studies at Cernăuți University in the Kingdom of Romania, he was regarded as a political suspect, and again escaped to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) in 1926—soon after that polity had been created within the Soviet Union. He was employed as a book publisher and journalist, emerging as an authority on literary matters. Lehtțir adopted Proletkult ideas about the need to destroy and rebuild cultural traditions; on such grounds, he and his colleague Iosif Vainberg came to deny that there was a Bessarabian literature that was worth preserving, and that Moldavian literary tradition could be built up from proletarian identity and Soviet patriotism. This sparked a special controversy within a larger debate about Romanian and Moldavian identity.
Lehtțir's ideas were disregarded by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which, in 1932, ordered writers to search for inspiration in their local traditions. As a result, Lehtțir revised his theory, and began hosting selective samples of older Romanian literature in Octombrie magazine. He became a founding figure of Moldavian theater, first with a historical play that was never performed in his lifetime, and later with a political play, Biruința. By that point, Lehtțir had also publicly welcomed the Latinization of Soviet alphabets, which had reduced to a minimum the differences between the Romanian and Moldavian literary standards. This position made the Stalinist regime take notice of Lehtțir, and contributed to his downfall and execution by the NKVD. Shortly before his death, he had been tortured into confessing that he was a Romanian spy. He was largely rehabilitated, alongside other Great Purge victims, by the early 1960s, but the details of his biography were purposefully hidden from the reading public by continued Soviet censorship.
Biography Early life Lehtțir belonged to the Bessarabian Jewish community. "Лехтцир (Лехицер) Самуил Ривинович", Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry entry David Khakham, Вспоминая забытого Лехтцира..., IsraGeo, December 24, 2019Sergiu Grossu, Îmi bate inima la Bug. Din problemele Transnistriei românești, p. 71. Chișinău: Museum, 2000. Smochină (1996), p. 305 He was born on October 25, 1901, at Otaci, in the Russian Empire's Bessarabia Governorate (Soroksky Uyezd). Iurie Colesnic, "Prima piesă montată pe scena tiraspoleană a fost a unui basarabean", in Timpul, July 23, 2014 Iurie Colesnic, "Scriitorii transnistreni între tragedie și minciună...", in Timpul, August 14, 2019 His father was known in Yiddish as "Ruvin-Chaim", a variant of the Hebrew "Reuben-Chaim"; the surname "Lehtțir" is of likely German origin, from lecht ("light") and zier ("ornament"). The poet's mother, Dina Aizikovna Akerman, was originally from Briceni. Lehtțir's native region proclaimed itself the Moldavian Democratic Republic in late 1917, shortly after the October Revolution in Russia; this polity was included in Romania by the end of 1918. The seventeen-year-old was an opponent of the union, and, as literary historians Nichita Smochină and Iurie Colesnic both indicate, actively fought against the Romanian military intervention.Smochină (1936), p. 153
After fleeing Greater Romania, Lehtțir completed his secondary education at Mohyliv-Podilskyi, in what was already Soviet Ukraine. Shortly after, he was found to have returned to Romania, and to have enrolled at Cernăuți University. His presence in the country was followed by the Siguranța police force, which had the young man listed as a sympathizer of the Soviet Union; Smochină reports that Lehtțir, who never graduated, was sentenced to a five-year jail term "for communist propaganda", but also that he evaded capture. In 1926, he illegally crossed the Dniester into the newly formed MASSR, moving for a second and final time into Soviet territory. The republican government welcomed him, assigning him to the Moldavian Scientific Center (formed as a local branch of the Soviet Academy), and employing him as a branch director of the State Publishing House in Tiraspol. He married a Soviet Jewish woman, Yevgenia Solomonovna Khosh. In 1927, they had a son, Myud.
On April 1, 1928, Lehtțir co-founded Răsăritul ("The East", or "The Sunrise"), an association of Soviet Moldavian writers. In July 1929, he became its secretary, serving directly under Dmitrii Milev; also that year, he published at Balta his first selection of verse, as Poezii ("Poems"), seen by theatrical historian Pyotr Yershov as a work of genuine literary value.Yershov, p. 190 The collection included a river-themed nocturne:
Lehtțir contributed translations of works by Aleksandr Bezymensky, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, and Sergei Yesenin; perhaps fluent in Hungarian, he published some translations from Sándor Petőfi. As he acknowledged in later essays, his literary youth was shaped by echoes from Yesenin, though he later came to regret them, calling Yesenin a "peasant" whose influence should have been carefully expunged from proletarian literature.Negură (2014), p. 95 Lehtțir's early contributions to literary criticism include articles in Plugarul Roșu newspaper. One such piece, appearing in November 1928, offered some praise to the cultural tradition of Bessarabia, described as distul di bogatî ("pretty extensive") and as worthy of imitation.Negură (2014), p. 114 At that stage, he was taking a direct interest in popularizing Romanian literature for a Soviet audience, especially through the magazine Moldova Literarî (of which he was the editor). It was here that he covered the works of Panait Istrati in 1929 (shortly after Istrati's visit to the MASSR); it was also here that, in December 1929, he condemned aspiring poets who plagiarized Romanian folklore as a means of getting ahead in literary life—Lehtțir wrongly identified Doina, a poem written by Vasile Alecsandri, as a folkloric sample.Negură (2014), pp. 104, 116
At that stage of his career, Lehtțir was endorsing the project to create a separate "Moldovan" or "Moldavian" language, part of which relied on establishing the Moldavian accent as standard pronunciation. He criticized translators working in the MASSR for using the "tough Romanian–Moldavian language, which Moldavian early readers have a hard time comprehending."Smochină (1936), p. 147 He soon became interested in creating political neologisms. The latter imitated Russian lexemes (bronzîinic, "of the Bronze Age", fărăclasnic, "classless", mîncătorie, "canteen" etc.), and, as argued by historian Maria Vieru-Ișaev, "belong to the annals of absurdity".Vieru-Ișaev, pp. 117–119. See also Smochină (1996), p. 304 By 1930, the orders he received from the Scientific Center staff were issued in the same form: Di poruncit tov. Lehtțir grabnic sî muti jurnalurili în păstralițî, slobozind loc în bibliotecî pentru monografii ("Ordering Comrade Lehtțir to quickly move the newspapers into the storage room, with the library thus cleared for the monographs").Vieru-Ișaev, p. 119
Latinization turn The neologistic current, formed around Leonid Madan, was eventually curbed by the Soviet authorities, resulting in a selective purge at the Scientific Center. As reported by Smochină, the post-backlash Center was entirely controlled by Lehtțir and Naum Nartsov, both of whom were Jewish; Nartsov's contribution was symbolic, since he was a "tinsmith and cobbler by trade". Historian Wim van Meurs notes that "Lekhttsir collected an enormous amount of source material on the history of the [Dniester's] left bank."Wim van Meurs, "Carving a Moldavian Identity out of History", in Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 1998, p. 46 Smochină similarly commended Lehtțir for his collecting an "immense volume of documents", but noted that he kept all "in the messiest way possible, in one unlocked room, so that anyone can lose or steal them". Moreover, he claimed that Lehtțir had kept for himself "almost all Romanian books in the library of that section he runs."
In 1930, along with Iosif Vainberg, Lehtțir issued a book of essays, titled Întrebări literari ("Literary Questions"), which revised some of his earlier positions. Scholar Silvia Grossu reviews this as a sample of Proletkult ideology, in that it denied any merit to local literary tradition—promoting a Moldovan (Moldavian) identity that relied entirely on Sovietization, and on these grounds was proclaimed as separate from the Romanian ethnos (see Moldovenism).Silvia Grossu, "Dimensiunea iluminist-culturalizatoare a presei cu profil religios", in Buletin Științific. Revista de Etnografie, Științele Naturii și Muzeologie, Issue 3/2005, pp. 212, 217 The tract is remembered for Lehtțir's own chapter, Literatura moldoveneascî'n Basarabia ("Moldavian Literature in Bessarabia"), which, according to social historian Petru Negură, was written in an ironic key. In it, Lehtțir expressed the opinion that Bessarabia was lost for a workers' literature—to which Vainberg added his claim that Soviet Moldavians, though of more meager talents, could constitute a bulwark against the "bourgeois" themes of Romanian literature.Negură (2014), pp. 93–94 The authors polemically argued: Vlad Caraman, "Deschideri către valori. Academicianul Haralambie Corbu la 85 de ani", in Akademos, Issue 1/2015, p. 187If other literatures have left us any sort of literary inheritance, of the kind that may be of some use after the revolution [of October 1917], Moldavian literature has had no such thing. And if we may address the question: what could we select from our literature of yesterday?, well, there is only one answer to give — nought.
According to literary historian Mihai Cimpoi, Întrebări literari, along with similar contributions by Milev and Pavel Chioru, evidences the poor state of literary culture in the MASSR: "[they are] quite modest, and slavish [...] toward the official ideology. [...] The dogmatic, vulgarized sociological spirit, with its purpose of detecting class enemies among the writers, as instructed by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, is dominant in that era, crushing nuances and all creative aspect of criticism."Cimpoi, p. 410 Negură notes that Întrebări literari was immediately superseded by two events, both of which took place in 1932: one was the castigation of Proletkult's legacy by the Soviet Central Committee; the other was the regime's talk of a "Moldavian language" that now "differed only in its name from the Romanian literary language".Negură (2014), p. 114 The change of vision was also underscored with the Latinization of Soviet alphabets. As Smochină reports: "If the Soviets have accepted a national culture, it was over communist fundamentals. Yet it seemed like things were clearing up. [...] The name of Latinization allowed the people its freedom to adapt its national culture to the fundamentals of communist doctrine."Smochină (1996), pp. 304–305
These developments sent MASSR writers to study old forms of Romanian literature, with samples of 19th-century Romanian authors appearing in the official literary magazine, Octombrie ("October").Negură (2014), pp. 114–115 Lehtțir himself became affiliated with that magazine, serving as its managerial secretary. It was also here that he made his name as a poet—the MASSR's most significant and "livelier" one, according to Smochină.Smochină (1936), pp. 153, 154–155 His lyrical works therein include a 1931 piece, also called Octombrie, which, Negură argues, was a celebration of Soviet patriotism. The Soviet Union "appears as a country of gigantic proportions, animated by a universal effervescence and enthusiasm."Negură (2013), pp. 104–105 & (2014), p. 315