Shining Path of this group are generally called "senderistas". All documents, periodicals and other materials produced by the organization are signed by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). Academics often refer to them as PCP-SL. The Shining Path was founded in the late 1960s by Abimael Guzmán, a former university philosophy professor (his followers referred to him by his nom de guerre which was "Presidente Gonzalo"). His teachings created the foundation of its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru — "Bandera Roja" (red flag), which in turn split from the original Peruvian Communist Party, a
Communist Party of the Netherlands broke away from the SDAP, when the reformist leadership blocked their publication of an autonomous journal. After the Russian Revolution the party adopted the name Communist and with the departure of the left-wing grouped around "De Internationale", the party adopted Marxism–Leninism, the official ideology of the USSR and the Comintern. This advocated the overthrow of the state by a vanguard party, which would lead the country towards socialism. The party remained faithful to the USSR's version of Marxism–Leninism during the 1920s, when Trotsky's interpretation became an important ideological competitor of Joseph Stalin's. This led to a split when a group