Career
His organization of the bombing of an anti-Soviet protest in response to reports of Allied negotiations in Moscow in November 1943 discussing assigning the Baltics to the Soviet sphere has been described as an act of terrorism by researchers of the Latvian Museum of the Occupation. Soviet sources described it as an act of "disrupting a Nazi occupier-organized inflammatory anti-Soviet demonstration."
He was jailed for his pro-Soviet agitation but released following the Soviet occupation in 1940. During the Nazi occupation in World World War II, Sudmalis was one of the organisers of the Soviet guerrilla resistance movement on the territory of Latvia.
Ultimately, the Soviets evacuated Liepāja two days before the Nazis entered the city.
He later organised a bomb attack on an anti-Soviet demonstration on Riga"s Cathedral Square (Latvian: Doma laukums), in which several civilians were killed. Fortunately, the bomb detonated prematurely and did not kill as many as planned.
A crowd of 10,000 participated in the victims" funeral procession. In February 1944, he was killed by the Germans.
He was awarded with two Orders of Lenin.
On 23 November 1978 a monument dedicated to Sudmalis was erected in Liepāja on Communist Youth League Square (Latvian: Komjaunatnes laukums. Present-day Jānis Čakste Square). The sculptors of the monument were Vilnis Albergs and Gaida Grundberga.
Its architects were O. Ostenbergs and I. Strautmanis.
Following the restoration of Latvia"s independence, on 21 July 1995 the statue of Sudmalis was relocated to the park of Liepāja Museum. One of the driving forces behind the move was local LNNK activist Voldemārs Prancāns, who disliked the fact that the monument had become a meeting place for the local Interfront and others who had opposed Latvia"s renewed independence from the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. A bronze bust of Imants Sudmalis once stood in Riga near the Riga Castle, but was dismantled in 1990s.
There is also a memorial stone to Sudmalis (erected 1962) at the Draudzības kurgāns (Burial-mound of Friendship) near Zilupe on the Latvian–Russian–Belarusian border. Schools, Pioneer youth organizations, streets, kolhozes, and a vessel in the Soviet fishing fleet were named for Sudmalis.
In 1968 an oil tanker built in Kerch was named for him.
As of 2006 this tanker sailed under the flag of Belize.