 Lenin was involved in setting up a Bolshevik Centre in Kuokkala, Grand Duchy of Finland, which was at the time a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Empire, before the Bolsheviks regained dominance of the RSDLP at its Fifth Congress, held in London in May 1907.As the Tsarist government cracked down on opposition—both by disbanding Russia's legislative assembly, the Second Duma, and by ordering its secret police, the Okhrana, to arrest revolutionaries—Lenin fled Finland for Switzerland.There he tried to exchange those banknotes stolen in Tiflis that had identifiable serial numbers on them.