Russian battleship Sevastopol (1911)

She temporarily mounted an imported Heinkel aircraft catapult atop the third turret between 1930 and 1933. It was transferred to the cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz when Sevastopol began the first stage of her reconstruction in November 1933. This was based on that done for her sister Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya, but was even more extensive. Her rear superstructure was enlarged and a new structure was built just forward of it which required the repositioning of the mainmast forward. This did not leave enough room for a derrick, as was fitted in Marat, and two large booms were fitted to handle aircraft while the existing boat cranes remained in place. The mast had to be reinforced by two short legs to handle the weight of the booms and their loads. Her false bow was reworked into a real forecastle like those fitted to her sisters. All twenty-five of her old boilers were replaced by a dozen oil-fired boilers originally intended for the Borodino-class battlecruisers. The space saved was used to add another inboard longitudinal watertight bulkhead that greatly improved her underwater protection.[8]

Her turrets were modified to use a fixed loading angle of 6° and fitted with more powerful elevating motors which increased their rate of fire to two rounds per minute. Their maximum elevation was increased to 40° which extended their range to 32,320 yards (29,550 m) and they were redesignated as MK-3-12 Mod. She landed her old 'Lender' AA guns and replaced them with six semi-automatic 45-millimeter (1.8 in) 21-K AA guns, three atop the fore and aft turrets. Three 76.2-millimeter (3.00 in) 34-K each were mounted on platforms on the fore and aft superstructures as well as a total of twelve 12.7-millimeter (0.50 in) DShKM machine guns. Her fire-control system was completely revised with a pair of KDP-6 fire control director, equipped with two 6-meter (20 ft) Zeiss rangefinders positioned atop both superstructures.[9] Her original Pollen Argo Clock mechanical fire-control computer was replaced with a copy of a Vickers Ltd fire-control computer, designated AKUR by the Soviets, as well as a copy of a Sperry stable vertical gyroscope.[10] She also received the first stabilized anti-aircraft directors in the Soviet fleet, SVP-1s that were fitted on each side of the forward superstructure. They were manually stabilized and less than satisfactory as the men manning them had difficulties keeping their sights on the horizon while the ship's motions were violent.[9]

Parizhskaya Kommuna finished the first stage of her reconstruction in January 1938 with unresolved stability issues derived from all of the additional topweight. The options to cure this were discussed at length until Marshal Voroshilov, the People's Commissar for Defense approved the addition of anti-torpedo bulges in 1939 which would increase the ship's underwater protection and rectify her stability problem. The second part of the reconstruction was carried out between December 1939 and July 1940. A pair of bulges were fitted that extended from the forward magazine to the rear magazine that increased the ship's beam by 5.62 meters (18.4 ft). They had an unusual form that consisted of an outer void compartment intended to weaken the explosive force of the torpedo backed by a relatively narrow section immediately adjacent to the original hull that extended from above the waterline to the bottom of the bilge. This was divided into two compartments; the lower of which was kept full of either fuel oil or water to absorb splinters and fragments from the explosion while the upper compartment was filled with small watertight tubes intended to preserve the ship's waterplane area and minimize flooding from gunfire hits around the waterline. The underwater torpedo tubes were incompatible with the bulges and were removed at this time. The bulges increased her standard displacement to 30,395 tonnes (29,915 long tons; 33,505 short tons), increased her metacentric height to 2.03 meters (6 ft 8 in) and reduced her speed to 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph). The Soviets took advantage of her extra stability to reinforce her deck armor by completely replacing her middle deck armor with 76.2-millimeter (3.00 in) cemented armor plates originally intended for Admiral Nakhimov-class cruisers. These were not ideal as they were harder than desirable for deck plates, but they did have the prime virtue of being free. At some point, the exact date is unknown, her 45-mm guns were removed and sixteen 37-millimeter (1.5 in) 70-K automatic AA guns were added, three each on the fore and aft turret tops and twelve in the superstructures.[11]

Four of Parizhskaya Kommuna's 120-mm guns were landed shortly before 22 June 1941.[12] When the Germans invaded she was in Sevastopol,[13] and she was initially kept in reserve during the Soviet attack on the Romanian port of Constanța.[14] She was evacuated to Novorossiysk on 30 October after the Germans breached Soviet defensive lines near the Perekop Isthmus. During 28–29 November she bombarded German and Romanian troops south of Sevastopol with 146 12-inch and 299 120-mm shells.[13] She steamed into Sevastopol's South Bay on 29 December and fired 179 and 265 120-mm shells at German troops before embarking 1025 wounded and departing in company with the cruiser Molotov on the 31st.[15] She bombarded German positions south of Feodosiya on the evening of 4–5 January 1942 and on 12 January. Parizhskaya Kommuna provided gunfire support during Soviet landings behind German lines along the southern coast of the Crimea three days later.[16] She bombarded German positions west and north of Feodosiya on the nights of 26–28 February in support of an offensive by the 44th Army. She fired her last shots of the war[15] at targets near Feodosiya during the nights of 20–22 March 1942 before returning to Poti, Georgia, to have her worn-out 12-inch guns relined.[17] By the time this was finished the Soviets were unwilling to expose such a prominent ship to German air attacks, which had already sunk a number of cruisers and destroyers.[15] She returned to her original name on 31 May 1943, but remained in Poti until late 1944 when she led the surviving major units of the Black Sea Fleet back to Sevastopol on 5 November.[15] Lend-Lease British Type 290 and 291 air-warning radars were fitted during the war.[12] She was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on 8 July 1945.[15]

She was reclassified as a 'school battleship' on 24 July 1954 and stricken on 17 February 1956. She was scrapped at Sevastopol in 1956–57.[18]