In this engaging book, Tom Aitken recounts the story of the Salvation Army's efforts to establish itself in Russia in the early twentieth century. The Army's push into Russia was halting up until the First World War. Aitken provides lively accounts of the various individuals, mostly Scandinavians and many of them women, who spearheaded the mission to Russia, establishing a toehold in St Petersburg, although without achieving legal status. Just as in the 1990s, when Salvationists returned to Russia, their name invoked fear in government circles that they were some sort of paramilitary organisation. Still, by 1913, they had managed to establish their newspaper, The Herald of Salvation, and regular meetings in the harbour area of St Petersburg. During the war, although it continued to lack legal status, the Army was permitted for the first time to engage in its characteristic social work, if not to proselytise (an activity forbidden to all but the state Orthodox Church). Aitken suggests that the success of these measures was due in part to the Army's willingness to respect Russians' Orthodox traditions, displaying icons where they worked and accepting the sign of the cross. Like other non-Orthodox religious groups, the year 1917 was one of opportunity and high ambition and, despite harsh economic conditions and political uncertainty, so were the early years of Bolshevik power. Ironically, the Salvation Army received its first legal recognition in Russia from the Communist government in 1922. By then it had spread beyond its initial base in Petrograd to Moscow and beyond. But seven months later, in early 1923, the Army was expelled from Soviet Russia. Aitken argues that the Army's failure to establish an ethnically Russian leadership was crucial to this fate. Although the documents cited do support this theory in part, more comparison with the experience of Russian evangelicals and other ‘sectarian’ groups would have strengthened his analysis of the Army's fate. Moreover, because Aitken does not read Russian, his primary sources come entirely from the Salvation Army's point of view. That said, Aitken sets this story very well in the broader context of Salvation Army history and deep reading in Russian history, making the book easily accessible to those without a background in these areas: he masterfully evokes life in the slums of the capital, for example, and includes an admirable, if somewhat cliché-ridden, account of Russian cultural history with an emphasis on the Orthodox Church and its influence. Ironically, at times, the Salvation Army narrative seems rather thin in comparison with the general background provided. For the scholar, the book's principal value lies in providing another interesting example of the religious ferment of the revolutionary era, in particular through extensive quotations from the personal files and memoirs of the participants.