On 21 June 1940 in Riga, General Ludvigs Bolšteins, commander of Latvia’s Border Guard Brigade and one of the builders of Latvia’s border guard system, died by suicide. It happened a few days after the beginning of the Soviet occupation and about an hour after his meeting with the newly appointed interior minister Vilis Lācis. The National Encyclopedia states that he shot himself in his office at the Ministry of the Interior, leaving a note that cited the destruction of Latvia’s independence as the reason.

Bolšteins’s death became a powerful symbol of the Latvian officer corps’ refusal to accept the destruction of state independence. It occurred on the same day that, under occupation, the puppet government of Augusts Kirhenšteins began operating and Latvia’s state institutions were brought under Soviet control.