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By 1914 Russia was in the midst of a major naval modernisation programme. The four dreadnoughts of the Gangut class were completing , and a number of new cruisers under construction , including two (named Muraviev Amurskiev and Admiral Nevolskoi) building in Germany . Large destroyers of the 'Novik' type also had vessels under construction in German yards. With the sudden eruption of the First World War the German Empire took over these vessels under construction - renamed Pillau and Elbing the two cruisers saw service at Jutland ,whilst the destroyers (affixed with a B- prefix) became the model for the later classes of large German destroyers , up to the superior H-class vessels of 1918.
Imperial Russia had been in the middle of a strategic build-up aimed at enlarging their Baltic and Black Sea fleets to a position of local superiority. In addition to the four dreadnoughts of the Gangut class , the Baltic fleet was to be reinforced by the four 14"-gunned battlecruisers of the Borodino class . The Black Sea fleet was , similarly , to receive four dreadnoughts of the Ekaterina II class to counter Turkish naval deployments , which , had peace been secured a short while longer , would have been built around the barttleships which in August 1914 were taken over by the Royal Navy as the Agincourt and Erin.
The outbreak of the First World War proved a fatal blow to the development of the Imperial Russian Navy . The Borodinos in the Baltic had been designed to rely upon German-built turbines ; although this was quickly redesigned to allow the use of Franco-British equipment difficulties in supply , and the priorities of the war in the East which was forced to favour the land war , meant an ever increasing amount of delay with the result that by the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917 none of these battlecruisers had been completed , whilst in the Black Sea only three of the planned four dreadnoughts of the first phase had been completed. The planned 16"-gunned battleships which the Tsar had hoped would begin construction in 1915 were never to be ordered , let alone laid down , although in 1916 the Black Sea Nikolayevsk yard produced a detailed design study which was , however, to remain a pipe-dream .
The revolutions of 1917 destroyed the Imperial Russian Navy , partly through a seaman-led purge of officers which eradicated discipline and destroyed battle-worthiness , and partly because no new construction was possible in the prevailing atmosphere. The Baltic Fleet attempted to hold itself together but many units quickly degenerated into rusty , unfit vessels unable to play any sort of role in the world of which they found themselves. In the Black Sea the position was even worse , with German forces taking over major warships , and the joint German-Turkish navy out of the Sea of Marmara forcing other vessels to decomission and destroy their offensive capability .
By the time of the Allied victory in late 1918 very little survived of the Russian navy.The seccession of the Ukraine meant that Allied forces intervened in the Black Sea , as well as in other theatres where the aim was to destabilise the Communist regime - Allied forces in the White Sea took control of the major ports , whilst in the Baltic they attacked the fleet at Kronstandt and sank , with MTBs , a number of major Russian warships. In the Far East Vladivostock was occupied by the Japanese and most or the warships there - destroyers and the like - taken over , and upon evacuation wrecked .
By the time that the Allies abandoned their involvement in the Russian Civil War and left Russia to the Communists , the Russian navy was but a shadow of its pre-war self. During the 1920s three of the Gangut class battleships were to be rebuilt with the fourth canibalised for parts. Nothing was to remain of the dreadnought fleet in the Black Sea , with remnant vessels having fled to Allied-held ports and subsequently been scrapped. The Far Eastern fleet , which was only just beginning to be rebuilt after the devastation of the Russo-Japanese War , was set back immensely and was to see the Russians abdicate power on the seas of the Far East to the Japanese .
