 Alksnis's grandmother spent 14 years in labor camps and his father was discriminated for being the son of an "enemy of the people".During the destalinization of late 1950s Yakov Alksnis was posthumously rehabilitated; the Air Forces college in Riga was named in his honour.Despite these Stalin-era persecutions of his family members, Viktor Alksnis became a staunch supporter of the Soviet political system.