“I looked into removing the bells or having a duplicate set made in the Netherlands,” he said, noting that a wealthy church in Long Island had been willing to cover the expenses.

Removing the bells would require dismantling the Lowell tower, which was originally planned as a clock tower modelled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia but was slightly redesigned and actually built around the bells.

Seventeen of the original 18 bells currently occupy the Lowell tower. The smallest measures the span of a hand, while the largest, named “Mother Earth,” weighs a full 13 tons.

The eighteenth bell, dubbed “Faith, Felicity and Harmony” by a Soviet bell specialist, was sent across the river to the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School.

Bossert said he proposed a compromise in the mid-1990s to return “Faith, Felicity and Harmony” to Russia as a gesture of understanding and as the first step in the possible future return of all the bells.

Eck said she imagined a similar scenario in which some of the smaller bells could be presented to St. Danilov’s as a “symbolic rendering” of Harvard’s concern and suggestive of returning the rest at some future point.

Most historians agree that if Crane had not purchased the bells, they would have been destroyed long ago by the Soviet regime.

“Harvard has not only done a good job of curating and preserving the bells, but also of allowing them to be seen,” Bossert said. “If the situation in Russia is not so stable and the bells are so revered, perhaps they are safer here.”