The requirement was for four very heavily armoured ships of 11-foot (3.4 m) draught and armed with 11-inch (279 mm) rifled guns, for which the total programme cost should not exceed four million rubles.

The 2,100-long-ton (2,100 t) Charodeika-class monitor met all of the requirements except that their armament was not powerful enough, so General-Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich selected Popov's circular design in late December 1869.

A model was built with a circular hull and performed well during tests in the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg in April 1870; when Tsar Alexander II received reports of the trials, he nicknamed the ship a "popovka", a diminutive form of the designer's name.

[2] Popov submitted several designs to the General-Admiral who selected the largest of these for a ship that displaced 6,054 long tons (6,151 t), 151 feet (46.0 m) in diameter, and armed with four 11-inch guns on 7 June.

On 24 October, the Tsar approved his design for a ship 96 feet (29.3 m) in diameter, armed with two 11-inch guns, and protected by 12 inches (305 mm) of armour.

[3] While under construction, Popov's design was modified by the addition of wood and copper sheathing to reduce biofouling, which increased Novgorod's diameter to 101 feet (30.8 m).

Despite initial concerns about her sea-keeping ability, Novgorod was a stable gun platform and had an easy roll that rarely exceeded 7–8°.

Her blunt hull form was not conducive to efficient steaming and she proved to be a prodigious consumer of coal as her capacity of 200 long tons (200 t) only gave her range of 480 nautical miles (890 km; 550 mi) at full speed.

The long-dormant facility at Nikolaev was chosen and the navy began ordering machinery and tools from Britain to re-equip the shipyard in 1870, when Russia abrogated those clauses of the treaty.

[9] A temporary slipway was built at the New Admiralty Shipyard in January 1871[10] and construction of Novgorod, named after the city,[11] began on 13 April.

Construction was delayed by late deliveries of parts and the workforce's lack of experience; the ship was finally launched on 2 June 1873, with Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich in attendance.

In 1875, the ship made a port visit to Taganrog, and hosted Sir Edward Reed during a cruise along the Crimean coast that October.

During the Russo-Turkish War, she was assigned to the defense of Odessa, and her armament was reinforced by a pair of 4-pounder 3.4-inch (86 mm) guns mounted on her aft superstructure to protect her against torpedo boats.

[13] The ship made a cruise to the Romanian town of Sulina on the Danube after the war, and she received armoured covers for her engine room skylight and the central barbette hatch to protect against plunging fire.

She was reclassified as a coast-defence ironclad on 13 February 1892, by which time her armament had been augmented by two 37-millimetre (1.5 in) quick-firing Hotchkiss five-barreled revolving cannon.

In his book, The World's Worst Warships, naval historian Antony Preston characterised the popovkas like this: But in other respects, they were a dismal failure.

[15] The design of these ships was very controversial while they were being built in the 1870s, with many articles being published in the newspapers of the day by supporters and detractors, and later picked up by historians.

One such account, published in 1875, claimed that Novgorod made an uncontrollable turn while on the Dniepr,[16] while Reed, describing a time when the ship's engines on one side were reversed during a cruise in Sevastopol Bay, wrote: "The circular form is so extremely favourable to this kind of handiness that the Novgorod can easily be revolved on her centre at a speed which quickly makes one giddy.

"[17] It would seem probable that the two reports quoted above were combined into the story as given by Fred T. Jane: "On a trial cruise, they (Novgorod and Vitse-admiral Popov) went up the Dniepr very nicely for some distance, till they turned to retire.