17 March — In the USSR, a law is adopted depriving peasants of freedom of movement.
20 June — The flight of V. P. Chkalov, G. F. Baidukov, and A. V. Belyakov to the USA via the North Pole is completed. 63 hours 16 minutes in the air.
30 July — In the USSR, extraordinary NKVD “troikas” receive the right to pass death sentences on “enemies of the people”.
21 September — J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published.
2 November — Ruby stars light up on five towers of the Moscow Kremlin.
In the USA, D. E. Emyr synthesizes vitamin B.
In Paris, the World’s Fair opens, for which Fernand Léger and his students prepare the panel Transmission of Energy; Pablo Picasso paints Guernica; Léger creates sets for the play The Birth of the City; and Vera Mukhina presents Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (a monumental sculpture in the style of socialist realism, installed above the Soviet pavilion).
In the 1937 population census, only the de facto population was counted. Questions about housing, family, place of birth and length of residence in one place, secondary occupation, and position in employment—items that characterized social status—were excluded from the questionnaire. A question about religion was included.
Its results revealed enormous population losses (including from the 1932–1934 famine, during which the country lost, according to various estimates, 6 to 8 million people), and a sharp increase in the share of residents in the “exiled” northern and eastern regions. When asked which faith they belonged to, even not-very-religious people answered: Orthodox, Muslim, etc. According to the census results, it turned out that in the country of “militant atheism” there were almost no atheists as such. In addition, 30% of women could not read syllables and sign their surname (this was the census criterion for literacy). Overall, one quarter of the population aged 10 and over could not read, despite claims of universal literacy. The census data were immediately confiscated and destroyed. Its organizers were repressed. Therefore, a new census was scheduled for 1939.