An aging Russki throwback, some 35 years ago today

The big 16,000-ton Sverdlov-class (Project 68bis) light cruiser Aleksandr Nevsky of the Soviet Red Banner Fleet on 26 October 1983, photographed in the Baltic.

While she would have been a mighty foe in 1938, when compared to the NATO cruisers of the Reagan-era, she was hopelessly obsolete.

Some 30 of these all-gun cruisers, based on Soviet lessons learned from WWII and study of Allied and Axis cruisers that passed through their hands then applied to the 1930’s Chapayev-class design, were ordered in the early 1950s– notably the last of their type fielded in large numbers. These ships carried a full dozen 6 inch/57 cal B-38 guns in four triple Mk 5-bis turrets. They were roughly equivalent to the U.S. Navy’s Cleveland-class light cruisers (14,500-tons, 4 × triple 6″/47cal guns) of WWII.

Following Stalin’s death, just 21 were completed and by the 1960s those left in service (