 The funds for the trip were paid for by the Religious Society of Friends and the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.Peter Kropotkin suggested Canada to Tolstoy as a safe-haven for the Doukhobors because while on a speaking tour across Canada, Kropotkin observed the religious tolerance experienced by the Mennonites.The first anarchist groups to attract a significant following of Russian workers or peasants, were the anarcho-communist Chernoe-Znamia groups, founded in Białystok in 1903.