Lenin had no tolerance for any trace of idealism in the views of either his opponents or his collaborators, and considered that anything short of a fully atheistic materialist outlook was a concession to the ideological dominance of the ruling classes and their religious beliefs. He considered religion to be political by nature and the primary target of ideological attacks. Lenin considered militant atheism to be so critical to his faction that he went beyond the Russian atheist tradition of Belinsky, Herzen, and Pisarev and organized a systematic, aggressive and uncompromising movement of antireligious agitation.