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Battleship Potemkin

Background

The “Potemkin” was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. She was built at the Nikolayev shipyard from 1898 and commissioned in 1904. Her name is in honor of Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, a Russian military hero of the 18th century.

The ship was made famous by an uprising. A rebellion of the crew was made against their oppressive officers in June of 1905 (during the Russian Revolution of 1905). It later became viewed as an initial step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917 too.

In 1905, the Central committee of the Social Democratic Organization of the Black Sea Fleet started preparations for a simultaneous crew uprising on all of the ships of the fleet, some time in the fall of 1905. However, at the time of the planning, “Potemkin” was away for firing exercises at Tendra Island and the rebellion broke out on its own June 14th, spontaneously and prematurely.

The uprising was sparked by the second in command of the battleship, who allegedly threatened reprisals against a number of the crew for their refusal to eat meat found to contain maggots when it was delivered to the warship. Reportedly, he mustered the crew on the quarterdeck, near where a tarpaulin was laid out and armed marines were drawn up. The sailors assumed that a group execution was pending and rushed the marines (themselves sailors) calling on them not to shoot. The actual events sparking off the mutiny remain uncertain to this day and have been fictionalized to some degree by the famous Sergei Eisenstein movie film “The Battleship Potemkin”. Certainly, discipline in the Tsarist Navy was harsh and morale was low following the defeats of the Russo-Japanese War.

The mutineers killed seven of the “Potemkin’s” eighteen officers, including it’s Captain Evgeny Golikov, his second in command Ippolit Giliarovsy and the medical officer who certified the meat was fit to eat. The surviving officers were placed under arrest, as were those of an accompanying torpedo-boat, the N267. One sailor, Grigory Vakulenchuk, was fatally wounded during the fight. The seamen organized a ship’s commission led by Afanasi Matushenko.

In the evening of that same day, the rebellious battleship came to Odessa flying a red flag. A general strike had been called in Odessa and there was some unrest, for which the arrival of the battleship provided a focus and incentive. However, the representatives of the contact commission of the Odessa Social Democratic Parties were not able to convince the battleship crew to land armed sailors and help workers to get weapons and act together. There was division and confusion amongst both sailors and strikers.

On June 16th, Vakulenchuk’s funeral turned into a political demonstration. Demonstrators crowded on the flight of steps leading from the port area to the center of the city, were reportedly fired upon by dismounted cavalry. This incident forms a dramatic high-point in the later film “Battleship Potemkin”. There is some dispute as to whether the encounter on the Odessa steps actually ever did occur. A London Times correspondent and the resident British Consul reported a number of clashes between demonstrators and troops throughout the city, at the time, and heavy loss of life. The evening of the following day “Potemkin” fired two shells at part of the city, where the headquarters of the Tsarist military authorities were located. One civilian was killed and limited damage was done. The Imperial military sent reinforcements to Odessa in order to suppress the civil disorder. The government issued an order to either force the “Potemkin” crew to give up or sink the battleship. Two squadrons of the Black Sea Fleet were sent for this purpose. They gathered at the Tendra Island on June 17th. “Potemkin” faced the squadron off and – refusing to give up – sailed through the center of it. This “silent battle” ended victoriously for “Potemkin”. The crews of the joint squadron refused to fire at the battleship and one of their battleships – “Georgiy Pobedonosets”- joined the “Potemkin”. The joint squadron went to Sevastopol. The three rebellious warships headed for Odessa.

The Central Committee of the Russian Democratic Labor Party tried to provide for the “Potemkin” uprising. However, Mikhail Vasilyev-Yuzhin, who came to Odessa at the request of Vladimir Lenin to lead the uprising, found that the battleship had left port.

In the evening of June 18th, the battleship sailed for Constanta (Romania) together with the topedo boat N267 for fuel and supplies. By this time, “Gergiy Pobedonosets” had surrendered to the authorities. On June 20th, the ship’s commission issued appeals “to all the civilized world” and “to all European powers”, proclaiming the crew’s firm decision to fight against the Tsarist regime. Romania authorities refused to permit supplies to be sent to the battleship. The same happened in the Russian port of Theodosia on June 22nd, where a landing party from the warship was fired on by troops. On June 25th, “Potemkin” returned to Constanta and it’s crew handed the ship over to the Romanian authorities.

After the uprising, the ship was returned to the Russian government by Romania. In October of 1905, it was renamed the “Punteleimon”. In April of 1917, the ship was renamed “Potemkin” again. However, in May they changed the name again to “Borets za svobodu (Freedom Fighter). In 1918, it had been captured by the Germans, then recaptured by the White Russians. In April of 1919, the interventionists blew it up in Sevastopol so it would not fall into Bolshevik hands. After the Russian Civil war, the wreck of the “Potemkin” was raised from the bottom of the sea and dismantled because of irreparable damage it suffered in the explosion.

The majority of the mutineers chose to remain in Romania after 1905, at least until the revolution of February 1917. Of  those who returned to Russia in the immediate aftermath of the mutiny, seven were executed as ringleaders, while 56 were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. A number of petty officers from the “Potemkin” were able to successfully argue that they had acted only under duress, while the crew of the Viekha, a support vessel caught up in the mutiny when it encountered the “Potemkin”, were acquitted after it was established that they had successfully argued for the release of
their own officers.

Amongst the 600 former members of the “Potemkin” crew who remained in Romania in 1905, and generally merged into the population, was the leader Afanasy Matushenko. Together with four colleagues, Matushenko returned to Russia under promise of an amnesty in 1907. He was however arrested and hanged. Another leader, Joseph Dymtchenko, fled Romania in 1908 with 31 other sailors and settled in Argentina.

Lenin wrote that the “Potemkin” uprising had had a huge importance in terms of being the first attempt at creating the nucleus of a revolutionary army, especially since part of the Tsarist armed forces had sided with the revolution. Lenin called “Potemkin” an “undefeated territory of the revolution”. The “Potemkin” uprising had a significant influence on the revolutionizing process in the Russian army and the fleet in 1917 for sure.

Tech Data:

Displacement: 12,500 tons
Length: 115.3m
Beam: 22.3m
Draught: 8.2m
Speed: 16 knots (29.6 km/h)
Machinery: two shaft VTE, 22 Bellville coal fired boilers, 11,300 hp.
Armament: 4x 305mm (12 in) guns in two turrets
16 x 152mm (6 in) guns
14 x 75mm (3 in) guns
various small-calibre guns
five x 380mm torpedo tubes
six to nine inch armour belt, 2.5 to three  inch thick deck
three to six inch (127 to 152mm) thick casements

The Kit

This is an ex-Heller kit, now long out of production. It is in a Russian model brand’s box. However, the writing on the box is all in Cyrillic Russian and I don’t know what that brand name is. The box is of the tray and lid variety. It is out of very flimsy, poor quality cardboard. I traded a fellow in St. Petersburg, Russia for this kit and it arrived in a very squashed condition.

The kit contains two large trees of chalk white colored parts in a large blousy cello bag. There is a tiny decal sheet in the kit, but it holds four modern Soviet naval flags. These are not appropriate for what the “Potemkin” flew in 1905. However, I did get the correct cloth flag from BECC brand model flags (UK). The correct flag should have just a blue letter “X” on a all white flag. The instruction sheet completes the kits contents.

The instructions consist of a single sheet, folded in half into four pages. This is printed all in Russian only and on very poor quality brown paper.

Page one begins with a profile line drawing of the “Potemkin”. This (I think) is followed by the history of the vessel. At the bottom of the page, on the left corner, is the first assembly step, where the drive shafts and propellers are assembled.

Page two through four give a total of five assembly steps. These are accompanied by blow by blow written instructions of the sequence to be used adding the parts. However, it is all in Russian and of little use to non-speakers of that language. There is no painting or marking illustrations, so we are are on our own there. You cannot even use the box art for help on this, because it shows a photo of the built up model in naked plastic…sigh.

Some of the parts in my kit arrived broken off the trees.

The first large tree holds: the two hull halves, the models cradle stand parts, deck parts, cabin roof, masts etc. (17 parts)

The second tree holds all the rest of the ship’s parts. This may be a cop out, for me, by not saying what everything is. Quite frankly, being foremost an armor modeler, I really don’t know what to call half of these things. You can see, for yourself, what they are in the photo of the tree. (148 parts that haven’t broken off the tree and a handful more that did).

The detail on these parts looks rather good. The molds have stood the test of time quite well and no flash is evident.

Conclusion

I recommend this model of a historically famous battleship to modelers that have had a few other ship models under their belts already. Perhaps Heller will re-issue it sometime. I just wish that this Russian model company had put some color info somewhere in the box or on it and the correct Russian flags (circa early-1900’s) would have been nice.

The finished model, shown on the box lid has some rigging added to it. However, whatever the modeler used for this rigging is way over-scale and thick. It is just a few lines and nowhere near the amount of rigging this ship probably had on it. Will have to find some good references for that someplace.