Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya was renamed Svobodnaya Rossiya (Russian: Свободная Россия, Free Russia) after the February Revolution of 1917.
[2] The lead ship of the class, Imperatritsa Mariya, had proven to be very bow-heavy in service and tended to take large amounts of water through her forward casemates.
[5] Her main battery consisted of a dozen Obukhovskii 12-inch Pattern 1907 guns mounted in four triple turrets distributed over the length of the ship.
The armor plates protecting the conning tower were 11.8 inches (300 mm) thick[7] Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya was built by the ONZiV Shipyard at Mykolaiv.
The battlecruiser was in pursuit of the Russian destroyers Pronzitelny and Leytenant Shestakov after they had sunk the 4,400-gross register ton (GRT) collier SS Carmen earlier that morning.
The destroyers had alerted Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya which had increased her speed in an attempt to intercept the faster Ottoman ship.
Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya fired 96 shells from her longer-ranged guns, but inflicted only splinter damage on Yavûz Sultân Selîm before she pulled out of range.
[10] Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya was escorting three seaplane carriers to attack Varna, Bulgaria, on 9 March when the operation was cancelled after a destroyer reconnoitering the harbor struck a mine and sank.
[11] The battleship may have briefly engaged the light cruiser Midilli on 4 April, firing at the smaller ship for about 15 minutes with little effect before she was able to disengage.
While covering another such operation a month later, the ship briefly engaged Midilli on 25 June as the cruiser was returning from a minelaying sortie off the mouths of the Danube River.
The navy ceased offensive operations against the Central Powers in early November in response to the Bolshevik Decree on Peace before a formal Armistice was signed the next month.
Svobodnaya Rossiya was scuttled on 19 June by four torpedoes fired by the destroyer Kerch in Novorossiysk harbor to prevent her from being turned over to the Germans as required by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.