This book is one of the first studies of the history of the Civil War, written in the late 1920s. Its authors: N. E. Kakurin and I. I. Vatsetis occupied staff and command posts at the army and front levels during the war. The level of their professional training is evidenced by the fact that both of them graduated from the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff before the October Revolution. Other, no less famous military leaders of the Red Army took part in the discussion and further work on the book - M. N. Tukhachevsky, R. P. Eideman, S. S. Kamenev, A. I. Egorov, P. P. Lebedev. The book provides an assessment of the general military-political situation of that time, an assessment of the plans and forces of the parties, and outlines the course of hostilities through the eyes of the direct participants. Their work still remains one of the most objective studies on this issue. The undoubted advantage of this military-historical work is that it is devoid of the ideological narrow-mindedness and bias characteristic of military historians of the later Soviet period.