With the exception of brief business trips and lecture tours to Japan and China, Schütte-Lihotzky remained in the Soviet Union until 1937, when Stalin's Great Purge made life there intolerable and dangerous as well. She and her husband moved first to London and later to Paris. Also, in 1933 Schütte-Lihotzky had presented some of her work at the Chicago world's fair, "Century of Progress".