LETTER TO A. A. IOFFE
3/V III [1918]

Comrade Ioffe,

Everything you write in your latest letters is absurd to the point of being supernatural.

To pursue the "former" policy of non-break with the Entente after Onega¹ is laughable. You cannot make a lady with a child a virgin again.

It is also laughable to call what we are doing — precisely continuing our maneuvering, letting the Germans take what the Entente has already taken, thereby complicating and delaying the Anglo-American-Japanese strangulation of Russia — intervention or assistance.

Without knowing the facts and without thinking them through, you have fallen into error with the memorandum, etc. If you wish to insist on this error, submit a statement to the Central Committee. Until your statement to the Central Committee, until the Central Committee accepts your resignation, until a replacement is sent to you, until his arrival, you will, of course, as a party member (as you yourself write), fulfill your duty.

Grufi! Lenin

¹ This refers to the occupation of Onega by British troops on July 31, 1918.