COLUMN ONE : Charity That Could Use a Hand : Soviet troubles have brought generous and helpful donations from Americans. But a makeshift relief network must contend with theft, corruption and chaos.

With little official encouragement and virtually no guarantee that their contributions will arrive where intended, thousands of individual and corporate donors across America are digging into their wallets to help the destitute in the former Soviet Union.

From glitzy Hollywood “Toyskis for Totskis” benefits to church-sponsored missionary appeals, many Americans are brushing aside Bush Administration ambivalence about such assistance in favor of old-fashioned neighborliness and promotion of American-style democracy abroad.

“Something about what is happening (in the Soviet republics) has triggered something in the imagination of the American people,” said Francis Luzzatto of the Citizens Democracy Corps, a quasi-government agency that promotes volunteerism in former Communist countries. “It is a new frontier. It is a challenge.”

While much of the donated material--from cans of Boston baked beans to costly medical equipment--has made it to orphanages, hospitals and schools from Moscow to Yerevan, other assistance has been effectively blockaded. Russian government officials and U.S. relief workers say donations have been left in U.S. warehouses for lack of overseas transportation, stranded on Tarmacs at Russian military airports, stolen from the backs of delivery trucks, or commandeered by the Russian Mafia and hawked on the black market.

“Nobody has long-term experience doing any of this,” said Neil Frame, procurement director for Los Angeles-based Operation USA, which has shipped about $500,000 in pharmaceutical supplies to St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad. “Right now, it is not a question of reinventing the wheel, but inventing it for the first time.”

The assistance traverses a makeshift network of private relief groups, some of which have been “making it up as we go along,” as one relief worker confessed. Even $165 million in food aid from the U.S. government, still being haggled over in Washington, is set to be channeled through private relief agencies.

The Bush Administration, which has been criticized at home and abroad for providing far less aid than Western European governments, will host a conference of international leaders next week to discuss the U.S. government’s role in relief efforts. Several hundred disparate private aid groups from across the country will meet in Washington at the same time to discuss for the first time how to coordinate their efforts, which together have involved millions of dollars in assistance.

Some of the groups amassing contributions, such as Monrovia-based World Vision, have a history of providing humanitarian assistance abroad, but others are so new to the scene that they are virtually impossible to track.

Two new California organizations even claim the same moniker--To Russia With Love--but neither the Sacramento group nor its Oakland namesake has a listed telephone number. The Oakland group still has its “flagship delivery”--four tons of Christmas food packages donated and decorated by schoolchildren across Northern California--sitting in an East Bay warehouse.

In San Francisco, socialite Patricia Montandon has organized collection of tons of food for needy children in Moscow. One recent cargo, however, ended in a public relations fiasco when she failed to provide proper shipping credentials and the food was seized by Russian soldiers for their families.

Two teachers in Flint, Mich., are soliciting donations from school clubs to be split between a Flint soup kitchen and a Russian hospital.

“There are a lot of groups popping up and trying to get things over there,” said Frame of Operation USA, an international relief agency founded in 1979. “Everyone runs into their pantries, their closets and medicine cabinets and tries to find someone who will take their bag of goodies. It is almost like sending it blind and hoping.”

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, Nanuli Shevardnadze, wife of the former Soviet foreign minister, said the American assistance, however imperfect, is as appreciated now as it was during the harsh winters of World War II.

“During the Second World War, when I was just a girl, I remember that I wore a fake fur coat made in America, which Americans had sent to the Soviet Union to help the Soviet people,” Shevardnadze said. “America has always distinguished itself by its humanitarian side and its willingness to help people.”

The American Foundation for the Performing Arts, best known for celebrity benefits and Hollywood luncheons, has jumped on appeals by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin for toys and is planning a “celebrity airlift” next month to Moscow hospitals and orphanages. The Beverly Hills-based group sponsored a star-studded party last month at Spago, and has invited Yeltsin to an Oscar-night gala benefiting a Russian humanitarian foundation.

“This was our first attempt,” said foundation promoter Michael Bass, who dreamed up the “Toyskis for Totskis” idea when his Russian-born wife began hearing of shortages in her native land. “We thought toys would be a nice symbolic gesture and it would start the situation going to where we could expand into food and other things.”

But in a story echoed by relief groups across the nation, several thousand toys collected through the Hollywood campaign have been tied up in Moscow and were not delivered to children before the recent Russian Christmas, an original goal of the drive. The group is now hoping Moscow businessman Michal Litwak, who says he has ties to the Yeltsin government, can safeguard shipments through a committee established by the Russian parliament.

Even experienced relief groups have had to improvise, they say, because there is no central clearinghouse or independent monitoring agency in the new republics to guarantee shipments. There are problems of theft, a chaotic transportation network, unresponsive or corrupt government officials and a work force ill-equipped to handle such an outpouring.

Simple tasks in the West have become behemoth ones in the republics. Finding trucks that work, keeping them fueled and in good repair, and navigating pothole-ridden roads have proven far more difficult for many groups than raising money and supplies.

Other obstacles have ranged from fuel shortages grounding aircraft to long food lines compelling workers to leave their jobs to purchase family groceries.

“The biggest problem we have isn’t sort of a resource problem from the outside,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s what do you do inside the Soviet Union once it arrives.”

Because of a long history of barring Western charities in the former Soviet Union, few relief groups responding to the current call for assistance can turn to established distribution networks in the republics. Some groups developed contacts during relief efforts after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine and the 1988 Armenian earthquake, but with the collapse of the central Soviet government last year, many of those relationships no longer are helpful.

Even the Red Cross, regarded as having one of the most effective relief networks in the republics, has been struggling to cope with a crumbling central structure. The Soviet Red Cross, which before last month directed Red Cross and Red Crescent activities in the 15 former republics, has lost control over its former regional members, leaving a power vacuum in the relief organization.

Leaders of the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are meeting this weekend in Moscow with the Red Cross groups from the various republics to determine how to restructure the organization.

Other relief organizations have dealt with the problems in a variety of ways. The Leesburg, Va., Baptist Church, which shipped 132,000 pounds of meat and dry milk to Moscow early this month, called on the 5,000-member Moscow Baptist Church to secure and deliver the cargo in Russia. Several secular relief groups, including San Pedro-based Park West Children’s Fund, have also turned to churches to distribute food and medical supplies.

Ukrainian, Russian, Armenian and other ethnic communities in the United States have called upon long-established family relationships in their former homelands. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will take advantage of those connections by channeling some of its food aid through the Armenian Church of North America.

Some cities, meanwhile, have built upon cultural exchanges and sister-city ties.

In Dubuque, Iowa, residents have shipped several parcels of medical supplies donated by doctors to Pyatigorsk, Russia, its sister city of three years. Hospitals and companies in Jacksonville, Fla., donated medical supplies and equipment worth $250,000 to its sister city, Murmansk, Russia, and also sent along several doctors and nurses to teach their Russian counterparts how to best use the assistance.

“The sister-city ties in this period, which is really tough for our country, are serving a critical need,” said Alexander Gorev, head of Twin Cities International in Moscow, which serves as an umbrella organization for sister cities in the 11 Commonwealth republics and Georgia.

Even when distribution obstacles are surmounted, relief workers say they still must circumvent an aggressive black market in Western goods to assure that the assistance reaches the neediest people. And in some cases, that has been impossible.

The Russian media have reported “two scandalous trials” of local Red Cross medical workers who took coffee, cookies and chocolates from aid parcels in Moscow, and also the case of the chairman of the Disabled Persons Society in the town of Pskov who stole 5,000 rubles in assistance. In all, one Moscow newspaper reported, 67 lawsuits have been filed over alleged aid thefts in Russia.

Montandon, the San Francisco socialite, shipped 33 tons of food last month to Moscow for hospitals and orphanages only to have the cargo diverted to the Russian military when she was not in Moscow on time to claim it. Montandon, whose cargo lacked proper international shipping documentation, was threatened with a $250,000 freight bill by the Russian company that transported the goods.

“I have had a really harrowing time,” said Montandon, founder of Children as the Peacemakers. “There is no one in charge, and the people who say they are in charge oftentimes are not to be trusted.”

Other, more experienced relief agencies said some shipping problems can be avoided by providing proper documentation and tightly monitoring cargo from the moment it leaves the United States.

In some instances, that can mean accompanying the cargo.

Donald Tipton, founder of Park West Children’s Fund, a relief agency in San Pedro that distributed $12 million in assistance worldwide last year, recently accompanied 64 tons of dehydrated noodle soup, over-the-counter stomach remedies and toys on an Aeroflot transport plane from San Diego to Moscow.

Tipton and two friends packed granola bars and sleeping bags for the 18-hour polar-route flight. Once they landed at a military base outside Moscow, Tipton turned down an invitation to stay in a hotel and spread out his sleeping bag on boxes of dolls, toy trucks and stuffed animals until friends arrived to unload the cargo.

“The only way to make sure anything gets there is to stay with it,” said Tipton. “We really wanted the toys to get to the orphanage. I wasn’t going to leave those boxes.”

World Vision, a religious relief agency founded 41 years ago that began working in the Soviet Union after the Armenian earthquake, has delivered 25,000 food packages to families in Armenia, Russia and Ukraine in recent months. The group estimates it has lost 5% of its shipments to theft--considered a small amount by groups providing aid to the Commonwealth republics--by moving the goods swiftly and never leaving them unattended.

While the U.S. relief groups represent a broad spectrum of philosophical, ideological and religious views, many of them have informally expressed a common political motivation: an obligation to help democracy take root in the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

“The Russian winter defeated Napoleon. It just as easily could defeat democracy,” said Jim Garrison of the San Francisco-based Russian Winter Campaign, a newly formed group associated with former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. “When the snow melts in Moscow, you are going to have a cluster of republics with democratic institutions or a cluster of republics with authoritarian institutions.”

But in Washington there is still disagreement about the urgency and extent of the need. Even accounting for assistance from private groups in the United States, Western European governments have contributed far more food and other assistance to the Commonwealth republics. Some European leaders have strongly criticized the Bush Administration for dragging its feet--a sentiment echoed by some in Congress.

There have been calls for the United States to launch a Marshall Plan-style relief effort, but with a prolonged recession and heavy expenses lingering from last year’s Gulf War, prospects for such a bailout are considered unlikely. Last year, in lieu of direct aid, the U.S. government extended the former Soviet republics about $3 billion in government-backed credit to purchase foodstuffs.

The Bush Administration has given some ground on direct aid. Last month, officials agreed to distribute $165 million in food aid through private relief organizations and provide $100 million to cover transportation costs. Initially, the Administration claimed that the former Soviet republics had enough food, blaming problems on poor distribution.

Some private relief groups also have argued there is no food shortage, emphasizing the need for medical aid, but there are few facts and much disagreement on the subject.

Ralph Wright, spokesman for the International Red Cross in Geneva, said there is a legitimate need for both food and medicine. Hospitals, orphanages, old-age homes and individual pensioners may have money to buy food, he said, but the value of the currency has dropped so rapidly that they cannot purchase enough. In those cases, particularly in the cities, food assistance is needed, he said.

“The most vulnerable will have troubles, but there is not a famine in the traditional sense,” he said.

The debate over the U.S relief effort is expected to come to a head next week at the conference in Washington. But some private groups fear it may be too late to make a difference this winter.

“The timeliness of it is escaping us all,” said Lynn Belland, Washington spokeswoman for World Vision, who said it takes at least six weeks for shipments to reach the former Soviet Union by sea, the most cost-effective means of transportation.

Despite the good intentions of many newcomers to the relief business, state officials and others urge donors to be cautious. In California, state law allows new charities to solicit donations for as long as 18 months before having to account for contributions, and federal tax laws allow groups to claim tax-exempt status for up to 15 months before being certified.

“The public has to be aware that it is extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies to get an honest and full accounting from solicitors who are not registered and are collecting money for a charity that may or may not exist,” said California Assistant Atty. Gen. Carole Kornblum, who heads the Justice Department’s charitable trust division.

To help avoid such problems and ensure donors get the most for their money, the International Red Cross recommends cash donations to established relief organizations, which often buy cheaper bulk food goods in Europe and ship them by truck to the Commonwealth republics.

“Going to your local A&P; or Safeway . . . unless you happen to know a family . . . is not the best way to get relief at the most reasonable price to these people,” said Wright in Geneva. “There is a tendency in the United States to have small, single-focus charities who collect things but don’t have the money for shipping. . . . We recommend that people contribute their money through charities that have a track record of being able to show the goods getting through.”

But some established agencies, such as Operation USA, began as single-issue charities years ago. And now many newcomers to aiding the former Soviet Union, such as Sacramento-based To Russia With Love, say they have successfully shipped goods abroad and expect to continue their work beyond this winter.

Others have more immediate concerns. In Oakland, Anita Scheff, who runs her 8-week-old To Russia With Love from her home, does not even have enough money to apply for tax-exempt status. She is still trying to find an airplane to carry the four tons of food packages she collected from schools.

Times staff writers Times staff writers Rone Tempest in Paris and Carey Goldberg in Moscow contributed to this story.

An Arduous Journey

Individuals and corporate donors across America are coming to the aid of the destitute in the former Soviet Union, but collecting contributions here is only the beginning of what can become a problem-ridden cross-continental relief effort. 1. Donations:

Individuals and corporations donate money and goods ---- ranging from dehydrated soup to heartburn remedies ---- to charitable groups, churches and other organizations trying to assist people in the former Soviet Union. 2. Stockpiling:

Smaller relief groups, with no means to transport the goods, stockpile them in warehouses and turn for help to the larger groups, which charter planes and ships. A shortage of money for fuel ---- which can cost up to $250,000 per flight ---- often grounds the relief effort. 3. Transport:

Goods are transported to the former Soviet republics, usually accompanied by volunteers to ensure the vessels are not diverted by “pirates” to a different destination. Some unaccompanied cargoes are “lost” in the system, often ending up on a booming black market. 4. Destination:

Once at an airport or harbor in the Commonwealth of Independent States, volunteers stay with the goods and guards are posted to help prevent theft. 5. Distribution:

Local organizations in the republics ---- ranging from churches to sister-city clubs -- unload the cargo into trucks for distribution. Disreputable groups or individuals sometimes steal the goods or skim from the top. 6. Recipients:

U.S. volunteers often remain with the cargo to ensure it reaches the intended recipients. But later, some goods may still be confiscated by the Russian Mafia or other groups and sold on the black market.

Commonwealth of Independent States 1. Russian Federation 2. Belarus 3. Ukraine 4. Moldova 5. Armenia 6. Azerbaijan 7. Turkmenistan 8. Uzbekistan 9. Tajikistan 10. Kyrgyzstan 11. Kazakhstan