Pamiat Azova

Pamiat’ Azova 

a cruiser of the Russian Baltic Fleet. It was laid down in 1886 and commissioned in 1890. The ship’s displacement was 6,734 tons. Its armament included two 203-mm, 13 152-mm, and 15 smaller guns. Its crew numbered 570.

A sailors’ uprising occurred on the Pamiat’Azova in 1906. The outbreak was organized by the Bolsheviks simultaneously with uprisings of soldiers and sailors in Sveaborg and Kronstadt. The Social Democratic organization on the Pamiat’ Azova was the leader in the artillery training detachment of which the cruiser was a part. The representative and liaison of the Revel committee of the RSDLP on the Pamiat’ Azova was the Bolshevik A. Koptiukh. Word came of the Sveaborg uprising of 1906 on July 19. On July 20 the insurgents seized the cruiser and elected a sailors’ committee, including A. Koptiukh, N. Lobadin, S. Gavrilov, A. Kolodin, and G. Boldyrev.

No uprisings were successfully initiated on the other ships of the artillery training detachment, and the cruiser arrived alone at the roads to Revel. Attempts to link up with the Revel committee and draw on the support of the workers proved to be unsuccessful, since the city was under martial law. A detachment of gendarmes and two companies of soldiers took over the Pamiat’ Azova and suppressed the uprising. A. Koptiukh and 17 sailors were sentenced to death and were shot. Twelve men were sentenced to hard labor and 28 to disciplinary punishments.

The Pamiat’ Azova became a training ship in 1907. It was called the Dvina from 1909 to 1917 and was renamed the Pamiat’ Azova in 1917. On Aug. 18, 1919, it was sunk at Kronstadt during an attack by English torpedo boats.

REFERENCES

Voennye moriaki v period Pervoi russkoi revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1955. Pages 252–66.
Korablev, Iu. Revoliutsionnye vosstaniia na Baltike v 1905–1906. Leningrad, 1956. Pages 108–22.