The Origins of the Russian Civil War

Concentrating particularly on the months from February 1917 to November 1918, this major contribution to the distinguished Origins of Modern Wars series explores the origins and nature of the Civil War in Russia, against the background of a country in the turmoil of revolution and anarchy.
Conventionally, when writing about these events, historians have tended to focus on the struggle between the Bolshevik Reds, representing the new order, and the White generals, representing the old world. Geoffrey Swain challenges that oversimple view of the conflict, and reveals how complex were the motives of the groups who precipitated it. Rather than a straightforward line-up of revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries, he shows how the Russian Civil War in fact began as an internecine struggle between the Bolsheviks and their fellow socialists, the 'Green' Socialist Revolutionaries.
By the end of 1918, this struggle had been subsumed within the wider conflict of Reds and Whites; but as that ran its course, with the accelerating repulse of the miscellaneous White forces, the fighting between the Greens and the Bolsheviks broke out again, and was only ultimately ended with the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1922.

Geoffrey Swain is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of the West of England, Bristol.