Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 7 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The January 1919 uprising has gone down in history as the Spartacist uprising , but in his biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Frölich contests this definition: The truth is that there was no Spartacus uprising . As he explains, the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in fact counted on a gradual revolutionary process, and certainly not on immediate armed struggle on the streets of Berlin . Actually, indicates Frölich, the truth is that the January fighting was carefully prepared and cunningly launched by the leaders of the counter-revolution . Consciousness brought from without What therefore emerges is a party unable to hold back the masses in the face of provocation or to organise a conscious action or an orderly retreat. In this way, the Spartacist leaders themselves were swept along by the party b...