Marxism as interpreted by Lenin and his successors required changes in social consciousness and the redirection of people’s beliefs. Soviet Marxism was considered incompatible with belief in the Supernatural. Communism required a conscious rejection of religion or else it could not be established.[43] This was not a secondary priority of the system, nor was it a hostility developed towards religion as a competing or rival system of thought, but it was a core and fundamental teaching of the philosophical doctrine of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[44] Marxist philosophy traditionally involved a thorough scientific critique of religion and an attempt to ‘demystify’ religious belief.