Shining Path 1992, the Shining Path has declined in activity. The common name of this group, Shining Path, distinguishes it from several other Peruvian communist parties with similar names (see Communism in Peru). The name is derived from a maxim of José Carlos Mariátegui, the founder of the original Peruvian Communist Party in the 1920s: ""El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución"" ("Marxism–Leninism will open the shining path to revolution"). This maxim was featured on the masthead of the newspaper of a Shining Path front group. Peruvian communist groups are often distinguished by the names of their publications. The followers
Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Purges of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union (, "", "cleansing of the party ranks") were a Soviet ritual in which periodic reviews of members of the Communist Party were conducted by other members and the security organs to get rid of "undesirables". In her book "Everyday Stalinism", Sheila Fitzpatrick says that such purges took place especially during the 1920s, a period of the young Soviet Union that she calls its "cultural revolution" (echoing the name of the similar later period in China), "bringing excitement into the workday bureaucratic routine".