1937 Soviet Top League

Season's notable situations

• As the previous the season was filled with violence on the field. According to the Russian sports historian Aksel Vartanyan on July 23, 1937, Dynamo Moscow visited another Dynamo in Leningrad. In several Leningrad newspapers the game was dubbed as the "Battle of the Neva". During the match the leading footballer of Leningrad team Pyotr Dementyev was hospitalized, while his "offender" Teterin was convoyed from Moscow by the Leningrad Oblast NKVD chief to apologize.
• During the Tbilisi match between Dinamo Tbilisi and Dynamo Kyiv, it was discovered that players of Dynamo Kyiv forgot their "Footballer's Books" in Kyiv and were supposed to be awarded administrative loss. The referee of the game Vladimir Strepikheyev took upon himself and encouragement from Boris Paichadze to hold the match, nonetheless. In the game report protocol Vladimir Strepikheyev noted that personally knowing all players of Dynamo Kyiv he confirmed that all players in the submitted report are correctly noted.
• Following the match of Dinamo Tbilisi vs Dynamo Kyiv, in two days Vladimir Strepikheyev served one more game in Tbilisi against Dynamo Leningrad before he returned to Moscow. Upon arrival to Moscow, Strepikheyev who refereed the 1937 Soviet Cup Final was arrested and soon executed at age 34.
• Interesting situation occurred with two rounds to go before the finish when Dynamo Kyiv was ahead with 33 points and the Moscow teams trailing right behind with Dynamo 30 and Spartak 30. Following the loss to Dinamo Tbilisi, Kyiv still had some possibility to keep their lead if Dynamo Moscow would lose to Metallurg and Dynamo Kyiv overpower Spartak.
• Near the end of the season on October 12, 1937, a big scandal erupted following the match between Muscovite Dynamo and Metallurg which ended in the 3:0 win for Dynamo. The scandal also influenced the situation with refereeing in the competition as the blame for the Dynamo vs Metallurg match was placed on the referee of the match who has accumulated several bad reviews from previous games. During the match the referee canceled two goals that Metallurg scored in the beginning and instead by the end of the first half Dynamo scored twice going for break with a two-goal lead. Following the match many leading Muscovite newspapers were demanding for the match to be replayed. And, while the central committee seemed to be ignoring the situation, on October 16, the local Moscow Committee of Physical Culture and Sport held discussion which was raised by the Red Sport newspaper about the match where some participants insisted on disqualification of the referee and replay of the match. On October 20, in the Soviet central newspaper "Pravda" appeared an article "About sports referees" where the author of the article was very critical not only about the referee of Dynamo-Metallurg match, but also number of other referees accusing them in corruption. About the same time several Leningrad newspapers also published articles about corruption in the sports referee community. The campaign against referees did not result in replay of the Dynamo-Metallurg match, but the All-Union Committee dissolved the Referee Collegium that supervised all referees, and many referees were disqualified and fired. Later after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1999 a sports historian Yuriy Lukosyak after studying some materials in the FSB Archives in Saint Petersburg published an article where he mentioned a "depesha" for the Leningrad NKVD of March 7, 1938, where several former referees were accused in planning of terrorist actions against the government officials including Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich.