Also referred to as the Izmail class, they were laid down in late 1912[Note 1] at Saint Petersburg for service with the Baltic Fleet.

Construction of the ships was delayed by a lack of capacity among domestic factories and the need to order some components from abroad.

The Soviet Navy proposed to convert Izmail, the ship closest to completion, to an aircraft carrier in 1925, but the plan was cancelled after political manoeuvring by the Red Army cut funding and she was eventually scrapped in 1931.

After the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russian Naval General Staff decided that it needed a squadron of fast armoured cruisers[Note 2][1] that could use their speed to engage the leader of an enemy's battle line, as Admiral Tōgō had done against the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima.

The Naval General Staff initially called for a ship with high speed (28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)), 305-millimetre (12 in) guns, and limited protection (a waterline belt of 190 mm or 7.5 in).

The Tsar, head of the Russian government, approved construction of four such ships on 5 May 1911, but the State Duma session ended before the proposal could be voted on.

The Naval General Staff issued a new specification on 1 July 1911 for a ship with a speed of only 26.5 knots (49.1 km/h; 30.5 mph) and with armour increased to 254 mm (10 in).

[4] The Naval Ministry solicited new bids on 8 September from 23 shipbuilders, domestic and foreign, but only 7 responded, even after the deadline was extended by a month.

To offset this additional weight, a planned rear conning tower was removed entirely and the thickness of the main belt was slightly reduced.

Mortise and tenon joints were introduced between the armour plates along their vertical edges to better distribute the shock of a shell impact and to lessen the stress on the supporting hull structure.

[12] However, Western sources have long stated incorrectly that the turbines for Navarin had been ordered from AG Vulcan, and that they were taken over at start of the war for use in the Brummer-class light cruisers.

[14] The ships' primary armament consisted of a dozen 52-calibre 356-millimetre (14 in) Model 1913 guns mounted in four electrically powered turrets.

[9][15] The secondary armament consisted of twenty-four 55-calibre 130 mm (5.1 in) Pattern 1913 guns mounted in casemates in the hull, twelve per side.

[16] These would provide data for the Geisler central artillery post analogue computer, which would then transmit commands to the gun crew.

[19] The mechanical fire-control computer would have been either a Pollen Argo range clock, which had been bought in 1913, or a domestically designed Erikson system.

Underwater protection was minimal: there was only a 10-millimetre (0.4 in) watertight bulkhead behind the upward extension of the double bottom, and this became thinner as the hull narrowed towards the end turrets.

When World War I began in August, the hull of Izmail was judged as being 43 per cent complete, the others lagging considerably behind.

Three of the four ships were launched in 1915, but it was clear that Russian industry would not be able to complete them during the war, mostly because the turrets were seriously delayed by non-delivery of foreign-built components and a shortage of steel.

Another intended change was to lengthen the funnels by 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) to minimise smoke interference with the bridge, which had been a problem on the Gangut-class dreadnoughts.

There were suggestions to improve the machinery with geared turbines, turbo-electric drive, or Föttinger's hydraulic transmission, but these were more theoretical than practical.

[23] After the end of the Russian Civil War was in sight by October 1921, the victorious Bolsheviks considered finishing Izmail, and possibly Borodino, to their original design.

None of the proposals was accepted, and all three of the less complete ships were sold to a German company for scrap on 21 August 1923 to raise much-needed cash for the government.

This proposal was approved by Alexey Rykov, Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars on 6 July 1925, but the Red Army was strongly opposed to spending more money on naval projects.

[26] After most of her boilers were used during the reconstructions of the battleships Parizhskaya Kommuna and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya,[27] Izmail was scrapped beginning in 1931 in Leningrad.