The Revolution and Civil War, marked by the breakdown of old social relations and structures of state and military administration, posed the task of creating a new model of the armed forces. This was a period of “revolutionary creativity” that included participation from virtually all parties involved in the civil conflict of 1917–1922. As events showed, the most viable were two of them, speaking under the red banner of Soviet power and the black banner of freedom and anarchy. The end of the struggle between the Red Army, led by the chairman of the RVSR L. D. Trotsky and the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine N. I. Makhno, marked the end of the Civil War. In the next book, the reader will not only be able to familiarize himself with the details of the biographies of these outstanding military-political figures, but also learn details about the methods of military development during the Civil War. Also, his attention will be presented with information about a little-studied page of Russian military history - the insurgent movement, a kind of “third force” of the Civil War.