On 26 June 1941 Munters was arrested. First imprisoned in Voronezh, he was transferred to Saratov in September and a year later - to Kirov Prison. There, on 14 April 1952, the Special Council of the NKVD sentenced Munters to 25 years in prison for "active struggle against the revolutionary workers' movement and hostile actions against the USSR" and imprisoned him in Moscow's Butyrka prison and Vladimir Central Prison. After the death of Joseph Stalin, he was released on 19 August 1954, but was forbidden to return to the Baltic states.
