The book was prepared by an instructor of the military apparatus of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands ("Communist Party of Germany", KPD) and an agent of the intelligence department of the Red Army, August Gailis.

It was originally published in German ("Der bewaffnete Aufstand", 1928),[1] followed three years later by translations into French ("L’insurrection armée", 1931)[2] and Russian ("Вооружённое восстание", 1931).

Armed Insurrection is a further development of this theme, which makes the book extremely interesting from the point of view of understanding the ideas spread among the leaders of the Comintern about armed insurrection, considered as the highest and «supreme form» of political struggle of the proletariat against the state power of the bourgeoisie, to be «conducted according to the rules of military science», so that «it presupposes a plan of campaign, offensive fighting operations and unbounded devotion and heroism on the part of the proletariat».

[10] In 1970 in Italy[11] and England,[12] and in 1971 in Germany,[13] three new editions of Neuberg's book were published, accompanied by introductory notes by former Comintern figure Erich Wollenberg, in which he named the "real authors" of the book: himself, as well as Vasily Blyukher, Hans Kippenberger, Osip Piatnitsky, Palmiro Togliatti, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Józef Unszlicht, Ho Chi Minh and Manfred Stern.

This version has remained generally accepted, even though in the 1990s Comintern documents were published, according to which the real author of the book was the Soviet agent August Gailis ("Neuberg" was his pseudonym during his clandestine work in Germany),[14] probably aided by Tuure Lehén (an important Finnish communist and later Finnish-Soviet politician, as well as a philosopher, journalist and historian).