Still Searching for the ‘Third Way’: Geoffrey Swain's Interventions in the Russian Civil Wars

This essay offers a critical analysis of the contributions to the history of the Russian Civil Wars made by one of its most prolific and controversial historians, Geoffrey Swain, setting his monographs, articles, chapters, book reviews and other writings on the subject into broader developments in the field. The author finds that Swain's interventions in debates on the civil wars have cut against the grain in many respects, but that Swain's case for the potentiality of an alternative outcome to the Civil-War struggles–a ‘Third Way’, one that was neither Red nor White but ‘Green’–remains, so far, not proven.