The Origins of the Russian Civil War

Origins of Modern Wars

by Geoffrey Swain

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.

Genres: History

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 1995

About the author

Geoffrey Swain is the Alec Nove Chair in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow.

Reviews

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using traditional political-history approaches, the book proposes an important revisionist intervention to suggest that there was more than one civil war in Russia - not just the Red-White one but also the Red-Green. By Greens the author means patriotic socialists, SRs, Popular Socialists and some Mensheviks. I would have called that Red-Pink civil war. The archival sources are deployed strategically, to underscore the Allies' role in the proceedings.

[Mick Maye · Rating 4 out of 5]

short and enjoyable.