'Saint George') was a unique submarine built during World War I for the Imperial Russian Navy by the Italian firm Ansaldo and the engineer Cesare Laurenti.

The submarine had been ordered by Russia in 1912, but the original boat was completed shortly after the outbreak of the war and entered service with the Royal Italian Navy.

Svyatoy Georgy left Italy and went on a five-thousand mile voyage on its own power from the Mediterranean Sea to the port of Arkhangelsk on the coast of northern Russia, where the submarine became part of the Arctic Ocean Flotilla.

After the events of the October Revolution, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War the crew took Svyatoy Georgy from Arkhangelsk along the Northern Dvina river and left it stranded on a sandbank.

[1] After the Italian entry into World War I on the side of the Entente later that year Russia ordered a replacement[2][3] as part of its 1915 emergency naval armament program.

[2] A crew of submariners from the Arctic Ocean Flotilla, led by Senior Lieutenant[6] Ivan I. Riznich, was sent by the Russian naval command to Italy.

They noted that the pipes of Svyatoy Georgy would freeze if the boat submerged in the cold northern waters, but the government saw its purpose for joining the Arctic Ocean Flotilla as that its presence would intimidate German warships from operating outside the port of Arkhangelsk.

[3] After a brief stop in Genoa the submarine left Italy for Gibraltar, where they were met by the British and rested for several days before departing, and entered the Atlantic Ocean.

During their time in the Atlantic the crew had to keep the hatch open for the diesel engines to receive air, which became a problem when during a storm water started getting into the submarine.

[2][7] The following day they were visited by Rear Admiral Vikorst, commander of the Arctic Ocean Flotilla, who delivered a message from Dmitry Verderevsky, the Minister of the Navy of the Russian Republic, congratulating Riznich and the entire crew for completing the voyage in difficult conditions.

[7] In late October 1917 the boat began preparations to be put in a dry dock for maintenance, which was done on 12 November, and in the spring of 1918 they were expecting that Svyatoy Georgy would be transferred to the Baltic.

[2][7] After being struck from the navy list on 24 July 1924,[1] it was still used as part of equipment for the recovery of sunk ships by the Soviet agency EPRON,[2] and it may have been turned into a training hulk that was in use until 1941,[8] before being scrapped.