WHEN DISCUSSING COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY IT IS NECESSARY TO DIFferentiate between two varying - indeed opposite views. Firstly there are the parties, organizations and institutions in countries within the Soviet sphere of influence (including parties in the West which are identified politically and ideologically with the USSR). Secondly the large number of parties and groups, which claim to be communist, and derive their ideology from Marx, Engels and Lenin, but which are highly critical of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its ideology. Although these fundamentalist groups are numerous and splintered they can be categorized into two mainstreams of thought: Maoist and Trotskyite. The Maoist ideology is not only the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party but also that of smaller, so called Maostic groups in the West.