A group of German radical socialists. Led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, it was formed in 1915 in order to overthrow the German imperial government and replace it with a communist regime. Spartakist was a pseudonym used by Liebknecht in calling on the modern ‘wage slave’ to revolt like the Roman gladiator Spartacus. In December 1918 the Spartakists became the German Communist Party and attempted to seize power in Berlin. In January 1919, Gustav Noske, as leader of the armed forces, ordered the suppression of all radical uprisings throughout Germany. Within days, a second rebellion in Berlin was brutally crushed and the two leaders murdered without trial. There was a further Spartakist rising in the Ruhr in 1920.