Voronchenko is hopeful that the bells, bought by a U.S.-based industrialist back in 1930 and then given to Harvard University, will be brought back home in the summer of 2005 or 2006. Talks with Harvard University are still underway, and the details are now being agreed upon, he reported. According to him, Harvard officials have met the Russian side's request with understanding.
A number of legal and technical problems remain to be solved, Voronchenko said. There is still quite a lot of work to do: taking the old bells off, arranging their delivery to Russia, and making replicas to replace them at Harvard. The Svyaz Vremyon foundation has consulted a team of specialists to find out whether it will be technically possible to remove and remount the bells. The specialists say the job will be a challenging one, but not impossible to cope with.
St. Daniel's Monastery used to have eighteen bells, built at various points over a period of two centuries. The largest of its three major bells, weighing about 12 tons, was cast in 1890 at the Finlandsky plant, in Moscow.
In the 1930s, Soviet authorities closed the cloister down, and were planning to recast its belfry. But the U.S. industrialist Charles Crane signaled he was willing to buy the bells at the price of their bronze. He then offered them a gift to Harvard University, and in 1931 they were installed in the tower of a newly-built campus dorm, Lowell House.
