Kare 11

Eighteen church bells will soon return to Russia after spending nearly 80 years at Harvard University.

The 400 year old bells narrowly escaped being melted down by radical atheists, as many church bells were, during the rule of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.

The monastery had the most famous belfry in Moscow after the Kremlin. In 1930 the monastery was closed, its abbot and monks were shot and property was confiscated.

The government was planning to melt the bells, but U.S. industrialist Charles Crane purchased them in 1930 from the Soviet Union, at the urging of a Harvard Professor. Crane gave them to Harvard where they were hung in 1931.

But since the fall of the communists, Russia has seen more religious tolerance develop. Both Harvard officials and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church believe it’s time for the bells to return to their rightful home, the Danilov Monastery in Moscow.

The bells will be shipped back to Moscow and placed back in the steeple of the monastery where they originally hung until the 1930s.

But Harvard isn’t going to be silent. Newly crafted bells, that look like the original ones, were dedicated in Moscow by Patriarch Alexiy II.

The new bells will be sent to Harvard to replace the antique ones when they are shipped back to Russia.