Russia was one of the first countries to use mines in combat and has used them with success in all of the conflicts up to and including WWI.  The first use of mines in Russian service was during the Crimean War where they were deployed to protect and Baltic ports.  While none of the Anglo-French ships were sunk, several were damaged and they caused the Allied commanders to be very cautious in their operations and are often credited with preventing Allied assault on Kronshtadt.  During the Russo-Turkish war on 1877-78 the mines were once again used for defense but also some offensive use was also envisioned.  During the Russo-Japanese war Russian mines were the the only successful weapons in their arsenal accounting for a two out of six Japanese battleships as well as several cruisers and destroyers.  Russian mine expertise reached a pinnacle during WWI when with a much weaker navy Russians managed to protect their own coasts and cause appreciable casualties to the Germans using mines.

They did however have a problem with the types of the ships that they had for mine warfare.  Russians basically had three different types of ships to lay mines in WWI, each had it's own advantages but also its own problems. First there were destroyers - they were fast (30+ knots) and could get close to the German shore and return in one night, but they could only carry 20-40 mines which was insufficient.  Then there were older protected and armored cruisers (Russians didn't have any modern cruisers in WWI), which could carry around 100 mines but were slow (18-22 knots) so they risked being intercepted by the Germans if operating close to their shores.  And finally there were minelayers which ere either obsolete warships converted to that duty or purpose built mine transports which could carry over 200 mines but they were very slow (12-8 knots), hence useful only for laying defensive minefields. So by 1915 a need for a new type of the ship became apparent.  The ship that was envisioned by the Russian navy was a fast light cruiser that can carry a lot of mines very fast to be able to get to the enemy shores, lay mines and return in the course of one night and be able to defend itself if it got in trouble.

The first preliminary design was created in the beginning of 1915 by the engineer Lampsi.  It was basically the same as Svetlana class light cruisers, the displacement was reduced from 6835t to 6350t by removing the side armor and thinning of the deck armor.  The ship was to be 4.8m shorter with the same beam and draft as Svetlanas, the power plant remained as in the original.  All of this worked to increase the speed to 30 knots.  The armament was five 150mm guns and 800 mines.  The project was submitted to the naval review on 7 March 1915, which rejected it.  The review determined that main problem with the design is that it had no watertight bulkheads on the lower deck in the middle of the ship, which would compromise survivability.  The other technical problems were awkward artillery placement, bad turn radius and the general crampiness of the project.  Overall the main complaint was that the project didn’t conform to the navy’s requirements* that were finalized at the same time as the project was being developed.  The requirements were for a ship that displaced 5500 tons and carried 400 mines which were all to be stored inside the ship with 6 mine laying stations (4 minimum).  The top speed of 35 knots was “very desirable” and 30 knot minelaying speed was necessary.  The range was to be 2000nm at 25 knots.  The armament was to be eight 130mm guns, two 40mm guns and two 450mm torpedo tubes.  The armor was to be 102mm on the sides and the conning tower, the deck of 38mm and 25mm for the ammo elevators.  Once the navy’s engineers** took a look at the navy requirements they determined that these requirements are impossible to achieve on the given displacement.  Never the less Reval’s Bekker and Co submitted a project displacing 5800t.  The commander of the Baltic fleet Vice-Admiral Kanin was extremely excited by the project and wanted to start construction immediately, but the design review by the navy’s engineering committee determined that the hull strength was too low and the engine power seemed to be too high to be realistic.

The naval design committee came up with two designs of their own – a 6250 ton, 31 knot cruiser with the side armor and 3000t unarmored ship.  The navy was forced to modify the requirements for the ship to make them more realistic.  The new requirements reduced the range to 1500nm at 25 knots, the armor was eliminated except for the 38mm box around the steering gear and the number of 130mm guns was reduced to six or seven.  On 16 September 1915 the Vice Admiral Rusin the commander of the main naval headquarters recommended that two minelaying cruisers were to be ordered for the readiness by May 1917 and two more by May 1918.  After the decision to build these was taken the requirements were modified once again.  The navy decided that to reach the required speed of 33 knots the minimal displacement was 4000t.  The work continued during January-April 1916 and the naval designers once again determined that the navy’s requirements were impossible to fulfill on the given displacement.  The naval designers (GUK) created three more projects – a 5000t with 200 rounds per gun and three elevators, 4500t with six guns and 100 rounds per gun and 300 mines and 4000ton with reduced speed of 29.5 knots.  The Naval headquarters dismissed the second and third projects because of the armament and speed deficiencies respectively.  It was decided to concentrate on the first project but the displacement was increased to 5300t and various shipyards were asked to submit the projects by 15 Sept 1916, but no one made it on time.  The projects were received in October 1916 and were generally satisfactory.  The decision was taken to go ahead with development of the design and to eventually order some ships.  Unfortunately the designs were still being worked on in February 1917 when the revolution stopped all of the work on these projects and none of the ships were actually laid down.

It should be noted that the idea of a cruiser-minelayer was popular with the navies at the time and several ships were build during and after WWI.  The German navy, faced with the same problems that they Russians were, came up with very similar design.  SMS Brummer and SMS Bremse were started in 1915 and commissioned in late 1916.  Their characteristics were close to the Russian designs - 4385 tons standard displacement, 28 knot top speed and armament consisting of four 150mm guns and 400 mines.  They were pretty successful in their operations during the war.  After seeing the success of the German ships the Royal navy built HMS Adventure in 1926, it was slightly bigger, slower and more lightly armed than the proposed Russian design at 6740 tons standard displacement with 27.5 knot top speed and with four 4.7" guns and 280-340 mines.  The last to the party were the French who used HMS Adventure as an example and build Pluton which displaced 5300 tons standard, had a top speed of 30 knots and was armed with four 138mm guns and 250 mines.  Looking at the competing designs it seems that Russian ships if build would have most likely come out slightly slower than 30 knots but would have been successful designs otherwise, providing useful service in both WWI and WWII (if they survived that far).

* The requirement were set by the MGSh – Mosrkoy Glavnyj Shtab – Main Naval Headquarters
** The designs were done and verified by the Shipbuilding section of the GUK – Glavnoe Upravlenie Korablestroeniya – Main Shipbuilding Directorate.

References:
 “Proekty Krejserov-zagraditeleley Sudostroitel’noj Programmy 1915 goda” (Projects of the Minelyaing cruisers from the 1915 shipbuilding program), V. Yu. Usov, Sudostroenie #11, 1988

To make the hull I took the plan of the ship's deck, scaled it down to 700 scale and glued it to a 1mm thick plastic.  I then cut it out of the sheet and glued it back to the sheet, repeating these steps until I had the desired thickness, making a sandwich out of the plastic sheet. The second deck and the forecastle was done the the same way. After that was done I covered the sides in 0.1mm thin plastic sheet to smooth them out and sanded it down to give the hull the needed shape. The wooden deck was made by scribing it with the sharp needle at about 0.5mm distance between the lines.  After the deck was scribed I added the superstructure which was made the same way as the hull by sandwiching several sheets of plastic together. 

Now it was time to build the smoke stacks.  Their construction was complicated by the fact that the stacks were at an angle to the deck and the angle of the top and bottom had to be identical and by the fact that the ship had funnel caps that were standard for that era.  To build them I came up with a stack made up from three pieces of brass tube - the outer tube, the lower inner tube and the upper inner tube.  The outer tube represented the main body of the stack, the lower tube was to attach the stack to the hull and the upper tube to attach the funnel cap to.  The bottom of the outer tube was filed down at the angle that the stack was supposed to meet the deck and then glued the lower inner tube inside of it.  At this point the stacks were glued into the holes drilled in the deck.  Their tops were not parallel to the deck or each other, so I used the file to file them down and make them parallel.  Once that was done I glued in the upper inner tubes to which the funnel caps would be attached.  I filed them down like I did the outer tubes until they were parallel to the deck and each other.  The next step was to build the caps themselves, which I did by gluing .20 square plastic rod around the upper inner tubes and once it was dry filing it down at the 45 degree angle.

Once the stacks were finished it was time to build the superstructure.  Fortunately the only pieces of it were the small fore and aft bridges.  They were built by taking 2mm square rod and gluing several of them together to form a large rectangular cross section that was later cut down into a necessary form to create the superstructure.  The bridges were made from .010" plastic.  Since the wings on the forward bridge were long and harrow I glued the 0.01" brass rod on the bottom of it to prevent drooping.  After the major pieces of the ship were done, the ship was detailed using pieces of photoetch and various details from the spares box - like cable reels, capstans and so on.  The ventilators were made in the low to the deck mushroom shape just like on the Svetlana class cruisers.  Various doors and hatches from a Lion Roar PE set were used.  The hardest thing to do at this stage of the build was to make the mine rails on the stern.  There are 6 sets or rails on the stern and to complicate the matter they are all curved and all are curved at a different curvature.  I tried scribing them, tried making them from wire and from sprue, nothing worked, at the end I ended up making them from cut down railing.  I cut one bar from the two bar railing and and glued it flat to the deck, the vertical bars kept the horizontal bars parallel (the vertical bars would not be visible in the finished model because they would be concealed by the mines) and this way finally worked.

Once the ship was detailed I was ready to paint it. As a first step I've painted the deck light tan color.  After that I masked it with strips of masking tape and I painted the mine deck and the bridges the the dark blue deck color that was common for the Russian ships of the period.  The hull was painted the medium grey color that was also commonly used on the Russian ships of the time.  After several levels of touch ups, the painting was finished.  I made the windows for the deckhouses and the slits for the conning tower by printing them on decal paper, which I transferred after painting but before doing a wash.  I did the wash using the stuff called "Black-It-Out".  It's a water soluble ink-like stuff that once dry I remove with a Q-tip and a stiff brush.  The final step was drybrushing with a lighter shade of the grey for the hull and tan for the deck.

After the hull was painted I started detailing the ship.  First thing I did was detail the forward bridge and the area around it.  The supports for the wings of the bridge were the biggest question that I had on the build - since the drawing that I used didn't show them I had to come up with the plausible setup on my own.  Since the wings were on the level of about second and a half story I didn't think that they would have been just straight from the deck so I came up with a truss arrangement.  First I soldered two 0.01 brass rods together in a T arrangement and then glued the PE cross braces that I got from spare PE sets in between them.  Once the braces were complete, I detailed the rest of the bridge - I added the railings which in the Russian WWI fashion were made canvas covered.  To simulate the canvas covers, I took a regular white paper glue, thinned it down with water and using the capillary action filled in the holes between the railings.  After that I painted them, washed and drybrushed them to blend them in with the rest of the ship.  Small details like searchlights, rangefinders and compasses were added from the spares box.  The aft superstructure was done in the pretty much the same manner.

The bow was detailed by making the paravane cables that went from the deck to the bottom of the ship, to which the paravanes would attach.  The parvanes themselves were stowed near the forward stack.  The anchors were made from the Tom's Modelworks anchor set and the chain was done by taking the WEM Askold set and cutting it into individual pieces and hooking them into each other to make a realistic chain.  Railings came from the Lion Roar PE set.

The ship was armed with eight 130mm/55 Obukhov Pattern 1913 guns, two 76mm Lender anti-aircraft guns, four Maxim machine guns as well as 300 mines.  To scratchbuild the main guns I came up with the new technique - the gunshields were drawn on the computer as a flat drawing, then scaled down and printed on paper, which then was impregnated with thin superglue.  Once it dried, I lightly sanded it and scored the drawing where the fold would go.  I then cut it out, folded and glued them together, gluing in the floor, made the same way, for stiffness.  It worked very well - sort of like poor man's photoetch.  The barrels were made from hypodermic tubing and the mount itself from a piece of plastic rod.

The 76mm AA guns were taken from the spares box.  Maxim machine guns were scratchbuilt.  I made the shield from superglue impregnated paper and the barrel from apiece of sprue.  The tripod mount was cut out from a piece of scrap photoetch.

The mines on the stern were taken from an Admiralty models set.  There are a total of 56 mines there (the rest were stowed in the hull), which was a painstaking process to glue them, but the end result looks worth it.

Masts were were made from brass rod of various thicknesses soldered together.  I've added various platforms to masts by making the base from 0.01" thick plastic and adding railings where needed.  The boat crane tackles and cables were taken from the WEM Askold set, carefully cut off the crane that came with it and glued to the mast and the crane, cutting to fit.  I used a punch to make several circles from the plastic to add the dimensions to the tackles. Various spreaders and supports were made from pieces of photoetch.  I always add the masts last, in order not to damage them while handling the model during construction.  Rigging was done using the string from pantyhose.

The boats came from the spares box and the boat skids were taken from spare PE sets.

The ship was weathered using pastels.  The photos show that Russian WWI ships were heavily weathered with salt, rust and dark streaks running down the sides.  To simulate it I used pastels of various dark colors (mostly black and shades of brown).  Once they were applied I rubbed them with a finger to blend them in a little bit.  The stacks and masts were covered in soot where appropriate.

It was an enjoyable build of an interesting never-was ship.  I gained even more experience in scratchbuilding during this project and now working on my next scratchbuilt ship.  Scratchbuilding is easier than it seems , especially in 1/700 scale, so do not be afraid to try.