Protestant communities (particularly Lutherans) first appeared in the Russian Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries in connection with expatriate communities from western Europe. In the 18th century, under Catherine II (the Great), large numbers of German settlers were invited to the Russian Empire, including Mennonites, Lutherans, Reformed and also Roman Catholics. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, various new religious movements emerged from the Russian Orthodox Church (including Molokans, Dukhobors, Khlysts, and to some extent, Subbotniks, and in 19th century Tolstoyan rural communes), and their existence prepared the ground for Protestantism's future spread. The first Baptist communities within the Russian Empire arose in unrelated strains in three widely separated regions of the Russian Empire (Transcaucasia, Ukraine, and St. Petersburg) in the 1860s and 1870s. In the early twentieth century, Pentecostal groups also formed. In the very early years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks focused their anti-religious efforts on the Russian Orthodox Church and it appeared to take a less hostile position towards the 'sectarians'. Already before Stalin's rise to power, the situation changed, however. And from the start of the 1930s, Protestants - like other religious groups - experienced the full force of Soviet repression. Churches were shut and religious leaders were arrested and convicted, often charged with anti-Soviet activity. One of the leaders of the Pentecostals movement, Ivan Voronaev, was sentenced to death in 1937, for example.