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 not breaking with the Entente after Onega¹ is ridiculous. You cannot make a lady with a child a virgin again.  

It is also ridiculous to call intervention or aid what we are continuing, namely, precisely the manoeuvring, leaving it to the Germans to take what has already been taken by the Entente, thereby complicating and delaying the Anglo-American-Japanese strangulation of Russia.  

Without knowing the facts and without having pondered them, you have fallen into error with the memorandum, etc. If you wish to insist on it, 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 member of the party (which you yourself write), fulfil your duty.  

Gruff! Lenin  

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