Latvia's interwar bronze coinage was struck under conditions of growing political instability — Kārlis Ulmanis had dissolved parliament and assumed authoritarian rule in 1934, meaning these final Santims pieces were issued not by a democratic republic but by a presidential dictatorship. Production continued through 1939, the last full year before Soviet occupation effectively ended Latvian monetary independence. The coins saw little more than two years of peacetime circulation before the geopolitical collapse of 1940 rendered them obsolete.
Latvia's interwar bronze coinage was struck under conditions of growing political instability — Kārlis Ulmanis had dissolved parliament and assumed authoritarian rule in 1934, meaning these final Santims pieces were issued not by a democratic republic but by a presidential dictatorship. Production continued through 1939, the last full year before Soviet occupation effectively ended Latvian monetary independence. The coins saw little more than two years of peacetime circulation before the geopolitical collapse of 1940 rendered them obsolete.