Tashkent

Tashkent (Russian: Ташкент) was the lead ship of her class of destroyer leaders (officially known as Project 20), built in Italy for the Soviet Navy just before World War II. The problems of the previous Leningrad-class destroyer leaders demonstrated that Russian design experience had atrophied in the years since the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Soviets contracted for design assistance from Fascist Italy in the mid-1930s. Delivered without any armament in 1939, Tashkent was given a temporary armament when she entered service with the Black Sea Fleet in late 1940. She was having her permanent armament installed when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) in mid-1941.