On 14–15 July, rigged and likely fabricated elections were held in which only Soviet-supported candidates were permitted to run. Those who failed to have their passports stamped for voting for a communist candidate risked getting shot in the back of the head. Tribunals were set up to punish "traitors to the people", those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting Estonia into the USSR. The "parliament" so elected proclaimed Estonia a socialist republic on July 21, 1940, and unanimously requested Estonia to be "accepted" into the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union annexed Estonia on August 6 and renamed the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The 1940 occupation and annexation of Estonia into the Soviet Union was considered illegal and never officially recognized by Great Britain, the United States and other Western democracies. The annexation abrogated numerous prior treaties entered into by the Soviet Union and its predecessor, Bolshevist Russia.