Monastery bells coming home
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Russia is bringing home from the United States 18 sacred Moscow monastery bells that had been sold as scrap by the Soviet Union.
Charles Crane, a U.S. industrialist and diplomat, bought the Danilovsky Monastery’s bells from Josef Stalin’s atheist government in 1930 and gave them to Harvard University. Many similar bells from churches were melted down in Stalin’s industrialization drive.
President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, the Russian Orthodox Church and business leaders mounted a successful drive for the bells to be returned in coming months. At Harvard, they will be replaced with new, similar bells.
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