# Speech at a Meeting on November 20, 1918, Dedicated to Honoring V. I. Lenin {78}
Brief Newspaper Report

(Comrade Lenin was greeted with thunderous applause, which turned into an ovation.) Comrades, I would like to say a few words regarding a letter published in today’s issue of Pravda. This letter comes from the pen of one of the prominent members of the Constituent Assembly and the Right Socialist-Revolutionary Party – Pitirim Sorokin. In this letter, Sorokin addresses his constituents with a statement that he is resigning his title as a member of the Constituent Assembly and renouncing any participation in politics. This letter is not only an extraordinarily interesting “human document,” but it also has enormous political significance.

As is well known, Pitirim Sorokin was the chief contributor to the Right SR newspaper Volya Naroda {79}, which went hand in hand with the Cadets. This admission in the published letter signifies a major turn, a break, occurring within a milieu that until now has been sharply hostile to Soviet power. If he says that in many cases the politics of certain figures prove socially harmful, this demonstrates that Pitirim Sorokin is at last openly and honestly acknowledging that the entire politics of the Right SRs was socially harmful.

Many representatives of this party are beginning, in connection with recent events, to understand that the time is coming when the full correctness of the Bolshevik position is being laid bare and all the blunders and mistakes of its irreconcilable enemies are being exposed.

Sorokin’s letter proves that among a whole range of groups hostile to us, we can count at the present moment on at least their neutral attitude toward Soviet power. Many were repelled from us by the monstrous Brest Peace, many did not believe in the revolution, many had a holy faith in the pure aspirations of the Allies, but now all this has been exposed, and everyone sees that the notorious Allies, who dictated to Germany conditions even more monstrous than those of the Brest Peace, are the same sort of plunderers as the German imperialists.

The Allies, as is well known, are supporters of the monarchical system in Russia; in Arkhangelsk, for example, they actively support the monarchists. The British are advancing on Russia in order to take the place of the defeated German imperialists. All this has opened the eyes of even the most inveterate and benighted opponents of the revolution.

Until now, many blind men followed the Constituent Assembly, whereas we always said that the Constituent Assembly is the slogan of the landowners, the monarchists, the entire Russian bourgeoisie headed by Milyukov, who sells Russia right and left – to whoever will pay more.

The American “republic” is strangling the working class. Now everyone has learned what a democratic republic is. Now it is clear to all that there can exist either triumphant imperialism or Soviet power – there is no middle ground. (Comrade Lenin’s speech was repeatedly covered by stormy ovations.)

Pravda No. 253 and Izvestia VTsIK No. 255, November 22, 1918.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper Pravda