1937 Soviet Union legislative election

Elections to the Supreme Soviet were held in the Soviet Union on 12 December 1937. It was the first election held under the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which had formed the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to replace the old legislature, the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union.

Electoral system
The elections were originally announced as being multi-candidate; however, by halfway through the year the announcement was reversed due to the leadership worrying about the possible emergence of political opposition. However, during that early period a number of individuals attempted to hold the government to the multi-candidate promise, including members of the Russian Orthodox Church who attempted to field religious candidates as a result of Article 134 of the new constitution, which promised freedom of religion. Many of the early individuals attempting to run as alternate candidates were arrested after the decision for multiple candidates was reversed. Additionally, the NKVD conducted mass arrests shortly before the elections.

Conduct
Despite the mass arrests and with the tone more subdued than with elections held in 1929, there were still minor waves of dissent and opposition to candidates, especially major political figures (including Mikhail Kalinin, Anastas Mikoyan, and even Joseph Stalin himself) as well as celebrities (such as Aleksei Tolstoy) and candidates opposed on the basis of ethnicity (such as ethnic Russians running in the Ukrainian SSR).

External sources

 * "State and Society Under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s," article by J. Arch Getty in Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991).
 * The Distinctiveness of Soviet Law. Ferdinand Joseph Maria Feldbrugge, ed. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: Dordrecht (1987): 110–112.
 * Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1999. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 179–182.
 * Kalinin speech in elections to the Supreme Soviet 1937