Her two sister ships, Sevastopol and Poltava, took part in the Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 and were sunk or scuttled during the final stages of the siege of Port Arthur in early 1905.

Chesma was seized by the British in early 1918 when they intervened in the Russian Civil War, abandoned by them when they withdrew and scrapped by the Soviets in 1924.

Tsar Alexander III's ambitious building programme of 1882 called for construction of 16 battleships in 20 years for the Baltic Fleet.

By 1890 the program was behind schedule and the director of the Naval Ministry, Vice Admiral Nikolay Chikhachyov [ru], proposed that six first-class and four second-class battleships be built together with some armored coast-defense ships to make up the numbers required.

Poltava and Petropavlovsk used turbines and boilers imported from Britain and slightly exceeded their specifications; during their sea trials, the ships reached maximum speeds of 16.29 and 16.38 knots (30.17 and 30.34 km/h; 18.75 and 18.85 mph) from 11,213 and 11,255 ihp (8,362 and 8,393 kW), respectively.

Sevastopol, using domestically built machinery, only reached a speed of 15.3 knots (28.3 km/h; 17.6 mph) from 9,368 indicated horsepower (6,986 kW), despite the extra boilers.

The Naval Ministry chose not to exercise the penalty provisions of the contract for failing to attain the design speed because it had specified the machinery to be used.

The Petropavlovsks carried a maximum of 1,050 long tons (1,070 t) of coal which allowed them to steam for 3,750 nautical miles (6,940 km; 4,320 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

[5] The main armament of the Petropavlovsk class consisted of four 40-caliber 12-inch guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure.

The gunnery officer consulted his references to get the range and calculated the proper elevation and deflection required to hit the target.

[11] The Russian armor-plate industry had not yet mastered the process for forming thick steel plates so the armor for these ships was ordered from companies in Germany and the United States.

It terminated in transverse bulkheads 9 inches (229 mm) thick fore and aft, leaving the ends of the ships unprotected.

Above the waterline belt was an upper strake of 5-inch (127 mm) armor that ran between the turret bases, seven and a half feet high.

[21] The Naval Ministry relieved Stark, and he was replaced by Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov who assumed command on 7 March.

[22] Casualties included Admiral Makarov and his guest, the war artist Vasily Vereshchagin,[23] 26 other officers and 652 enlisted men.

All of the 47- and 37-millimeter guns in the lower hull embrasures were removed from Poltava and Sevastopol during this time; some were remounted on the superstructure, but others were used to reinforce the land defenses of Port Arthur.

[24] Vitgeft made another attempt to break through the Japanese blockade on 10 August in obedience to a direct order from Tsar Nicholas II.

The Russian second-in-command, Rear Admiral Prince Pavel Ukhtomsky, eventually gained control of the squadron and led most of the ships back to Port Arthur.

[25] On 23 August, Sevastopol sortied to bombard Japanese troops and struck a mine near her forward magazines while returning to port.

Both ships were lightly damaged by 28-centimeter (11 in) shells in October when the Imperial Japanese Army's siege guns began firing blindly into the harbor.

Badly damaged, Sevastopol was towed to deep water about two weeks later, when Port Arthur surrendered on 2 January 1905 and scuttled.

[26] Poltava was subsequently raised, repaired and reclassified as a first-class coastal defense ship in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Renamed Tango (丹後),[27] she served as a gunnery training ship[28] and participated in the siege of Tsingtao at the beginning of World War I.

[30] Her crew joined the Bolsheviks in October 1917 and Chesma was captured by the British in Murmansk in March 1918 during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.