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.

[2] 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.

[1][5][7] 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;[5] 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 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"),[5] seen by theatrical historian Pyotr Yershov as a work of genuine literary value.

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.

[4] Historian Wim van Meurs notes that "Lekhttsir collected an enormous amount of source material on the history of the [Dniester's] left bank.

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).

[16] 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.

"[24] Lehtțir's poetry is described by Colesnic as "politically engaged" and mostly "minor", with the exception of one Octombrie poem which anticipated the first manned space flight by over 25 years.

[5] As noted by Smochină, his political poetry often expands on his grievances against Romania, with Bessarabia depicted as an enslaved giant; stylistically, these pieces follow Mihai Eminescu, Alecsandri and Yesenin, to the point where they plagiarize from the latter.

Poezîi ("Poems") of 1929[25] was followed by În flăcări ("In Flames", 1931), Sirenele zidirii ("Sirens of Construction", 1932), De pază ("On Guard", 1935) and Dezrobire ("Emancipation", also 1935).

[1][2][5] In the former, Lehtțir explored the story of haiduci[2][26] and other themes in the history of "feudal Moldavia"—this is probably why the work was never shown in MASSR theaters, which still followed proletarian commands.

[5] Biruința, which Smochină sees as closely modeled on Alecsandri's plays,[27] is largely about "the shock worker movement and the most recent socialist labor methods".

[2][29] In 1935, Lehtțir returned with the epic poem Ostașul roșu ("The Red Soldier"), which celebrated Soviet defense capabilities, comparing recruits with the bogaturs of Russian folklore.

According to Colesnic's research, the NKVD then tortured him into confessing that his crossing of the Dniester was as a Romanian spy, and that his support for the Latin alphabet was a deliberate attempt to undermine the Soviet Union.

[5] According to family tradition, Lehtțir was executed on May 12, 1937, which was shortly after Yevgenia's arrest and deportation to the Gulag; also then, Myud was taken from the couple and assigned to a state orphanage.

A "Comrade Brihman" reported at the time that the introduction of "Romanian authors" in MASSR textbooks, weighed against an "insignificant number of Russian and Ukrainian classics", had been highly detrimental for the education process.

Writing shortly after this, in August 1941, Romanian scholar Sergiu Grossu referred to Lehtțir, Milev, Cornfeld and Culai Neniu as "dubious" non-Romanians pushed into the MASSR's literary culture by "Judeo-communist ideas".

Philologist Ion Șpac recalls that, during his time as a student at Chișinău University in the mid 1950s, Soviet censorship had made it impossible to even mention "the great Samuil Lehtțir".

[33] Lehtțir was "fully rehabilitated" after De-Stalinization in 1956; in 1967, Yevgenia, who had returned from the camps some 20 years before, launched a public appeal for her late husband's recovery, including clarification regarding the circumstances of his death.

[2] That institution also preserves Lehtțir's signed copy of Dimitrie Cantemir's Descriptio Moldaviae, in the German edition of 1771; its first known owner was Ivan Liprandi.

[35] In July 2022, Lehtțir had his name inscribed on a votive cross in Chișinău, alongside Cabac, Chioru, Milev, Săteanu, and 28 other writers described as "massacred or deported by the diabolical communist-Stalinist regime.