THE Salvation Army, champion of Russia's poor since Tsarist times, faces closure today when the Moscow city government takes it to court. Critics suspect that the Russian Orthodox Church, which enjoys a conspicuously close relationship with Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, is behind the campaign to shut it down.
The charity is one of only a handful providing emergency aid to the elderly, sick and homeless, but the Church is bitterly opposed to the flowering of non-orthodox religions in post-communist Russia and regards the Salvation Army as a cultish religious group. It is desperate to retain what it perceives as its rightful dominance of Russia's religious landscape and to maintain its influence on the State.
Colonel Kenneth Baillie, head of the charity in Russia, said that he had heard speculation about the Orthodox Church and had wondered whether the affair was an indirect appeal for money. "But we will not simply fold up our tents and walk away - we will battle this and win."
The Salvation Army opened its doors to Russia's destitute in 1913, was liquidated by Lenin's secret police force in 1923 and returned in 1992 to feed, clothe and give moral support to millions of Russians suddenly rendered poor, homeless and confused by the collapse of communism and of its relatively generous state benefits.
Last November Mr Luzhkov refused to grant it a permit to work in Moscow, even though other Russian cities had registered it. The Moscow authorities did not say why, but the Salvation Army said after those hearings that the court had been told that it was a militarised group intent on violent overthrow of the Russian Government.
Clues to the reasons behind the attempts to close down the charity lie in a controversial law introduced four years ago. It stipulated that all but four mainstream religions must re-register with the authorities. Legislators were thought to have been heavily influenced by the Orthodox Church.
Mr Luzhkov does not hide his relationship with the Church, most notably by building an ugly, £360 million cathedral in the centre of Moscow in the early 1990s, the most economically unstable period after perestroika.
Today Gordon Lewis, 53, and his wife, Pauline, 67, senior Salvation Army officers from Croydon, are wondering whether they will have to book their flights home. "It's difficult to read their minds. When we worked in Volgograd, we were classed as a new cult," Mr Lewis, who used to work with London's homeless, said.
As he and his Russian assistants handed out lunches to a group of mentally handicapped adults, Irina Pustashnova, 37, a former dry cleaner and one of 450 Russians working for the Army in Moscow, said: "They get about 1,200 roubles a month disability benefit and a third of that goes on bills."
Vladislav is 25, severely schizophrenic and unable to get around Moscow alone. The Salvation Army is his only outing from the cramped apartment where he lives with his ageing parents. After his lunch of bread, ham, tea and biscuits, he constructs brown paper bags.
The Army also hands out soup to the homeless, visits prison inmates and holds social evenings for lonely Russian pensioners.