Lenin was enraged with this idea of Lunacharsky, however, because he considered it a concession to religious belief, and therefore harmful in the extreme. He claimed it ignored the fact that religion was an ideological tool of suppression of the masses, and he claimed that Lunacharsky’s ideas were a dangerous and unnecessary compromise with the reactionary forces of the Russian Empire. Militant atheism became the testing principle of sincerity of Marxist commitment to Lenin, and it was a violation of the principles of socialism to compromise even in this way, wherein no supernatural beliefs were invoked, with religious ideas.[37]