What was the “triumvirate of people’s commissars” supposedly chosen by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets? How was the secret war with Germany conducted after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty? Were the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries really half-crazed “revolutionary romantics” who stood in positions of “holy war” without a regular army? How did the Red Army become the most powerful political institution? What is the collective portrait of “Trotsky’s cadres”? How did military counterintelligence guard the Red Army? What was the other side of Soviet military development?.. Historian Sergei Voitikov answers these and many other pressing questions in his book. The author analyzes the period of the Civil War, when the leadership of the Red Army went through its formation process - from the creation of the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs to the large-scale reorganization of the central apparatus of the Red Army, which began in February 1921. The book is based on many unknown documents, most of which were not previously involved in research, first identified in more than 40 collections of four archives: three federal and one regional. The book is intended for a wide range of readers.