MOSCOW — Like cans of Spam and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, American-made Douglas airplanes became symbols to Soviet people of World War II-era cooperation between their country and the United States.

During the war, the United States sent 705 Douglas transport planes to the U.S.S.R. under the Lend-Lease program, flying them from Alaska across Siberia. Some were shot down or crashed, others were returned to the United States after the war, and some remained in use in the Soviet Union for years after the fighting ended.

Only one remains in Russia today, a Russian historian of Lend-Lease said, preserved by a quirk of fate: The twin-engine C-47 made an emergency landing on a patch of Arctic tundra so remote that for almost 70 years, nobody ever stripped it for scrap metal or bothered to retrieve it.

Now, the plane may have a future that is no less improbable than its past.

Relations between the United States and Russia are at an ebb today over Moscow’s election interference and the wars in Ukraine and Syria. Even so, a group linked to the Russian government plans to restore and exhibit the American aircraft as a centerpiece in a new museum — a reminder of a time when the two powers set aside their differences and worked closely together.