During the Great Purge, as a part of the so-called "Latvian Operation", he was arrested on either May 22 or 23, 1937 and executed on either 26 or 28 November in Moscow.
He worked as a turner and machinist polisher at various factories in Libau, Petrograd, and Lysva.
From April 1928 to July 1930 he was secretary of the administrative meetings of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR.
On November 26 or 28, 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death.
His wife, Klavdiya Petrovna Appoga (born in 1898), was sentenced to eight years in the camps in December 1937 as a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland.