Shining Path of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima. As the organization grew in power, a cult of personality grew around Guzmán. The official ideology of the Shining Path ceased to be "Marxism–Leninism–Mao Tse-tung thought", and was instead referred to as "Marxism–Leninism–Maoism–Gonzalo thought". The Shining Path fought against Peru's other major guerrilla group, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), as well as campesino self-defense groups organized by the Peruvian armed forces. Although the reliability of reports regarding the Shining Path's atrocities remains a matter of controversy in Peru, the organization's use of
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".