Poltava (Полтава) was the second of the Gangut-class battleships of the Imperial Russian Navy built before World War I.

Her role was to defend the mouth of the Gulf of Finland against the Germans, who never tried to enter, so she spent her time training and providing cover for mine laying operations.

Twenty-five Yarrow boilers provided steam to the engines at a designed working pressure of 17.5 standard atmospheres (1,770 kPa; 257 psi).

[2] The main armament of the Ganguts consisted of a dozen 52-caliber Obukhovskii 12-inch (305 mm) Pattern 1907 guns mounted in four triple turrets distributed the length of the ship.

Sixteen 50-caliber 4.7-inch (119 mm) Pattern 1905 guns were mounted in casemates as the secondary battery intended to defend the ship against torpedo boats.

[5] At the end of October 1914 she was struck by her sister Gangut which jammed her kedge anchor, damaged her hull and delayed her trials to late November 1914.

Along with the Borodino-class battlecruiser Izmail she was considered for conversion to an aircraft carrier in 1924 for service in the Black Sea, but this proved to be too ambitious and expensive given the state of the Soviet economy shortly after the end of the Russian Civil War.

Subsequent plans that focused on reconstructing her as a modernized equivalent to her sisters or even as a battlecruiser, with one turret to be removed to save weight, were considered, but finally abandoned on 23 January 1935 when all work was stopped.

Kliment Voroshilov approved one last plan to turn her into a floating battery, but the Baltic Works had no capacity to spare and this project was cancelled on 9 July 1939.

During this period she was used as a barracks hulk while she was stripped for parts, until she was formally discarded 1 December 1940, after scrapping had already begun at a leisurely pace.

[7] After the German invasion she was towed to Kronstadt and run aground late July 1941 near the Leningrad Sea Canal.

[9] After World War II two turrets and their guns were used to rebuild Coast Defence Battery 30 (Maksim Gor'kii I) in Sevastopol.