Traditionally, the in-fighting within the communist party during the Russian Civil War has been interpreted by historians as a struggle between good and evil, between Trotsky's democratically inclined party versus the later bureaucratic Stalinist version. This the view that Trotsky himself took, the line that R. V. Daniels supported in the 1960s, and which has remained in orthodoxy ever since. This book, in its analysis of the communist party from 1917 to 1922, challenges the simplicity of such dualistic historical arguments.

What emerges from Lonergan's meticulous research is a party in constant flux, where conflict and compromise was prioritised ahead of calculation and strategy and where the desperate need to survive drove decisions forward. Indeed, the resultant autocratic structures and draconian resolutions were not merely the result of blind devotion to Lenin, as this book reveals, the unsettled and turbulent party membership in many ways actually pushed the leadership into an increasingly authoritarian stance.

Examining the six party congresses that took place during the civil war and drawing from the political and personal archives of various party members, The Communist Party in the Russian Civil War is an exciting, novel, and much-needed re-assessment of the Soviet Union's formative political years.