The 1980s were the peak of the industrial power of the Soviet shipbuilding giant, the Black Sea Shipyard. The high point of his performance, success and achievements. The enterprise had enough merit to the Fatherland too: the ships built in Nikolaev on the stocks of the ChSZ numbered in the hundreds and plowed all the seas and oceans of the planet. The plant, like many enterprises of the Soviet Union, had a wide range of production from heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers and ro-ro-rokers-gas turbines to excellent quality furniture, which still serves many residents of Nikolaev to this day. The plant had many institutions on its balance sheet: a large palace of culture, libraries, 23 kindergartens for 3,500 children, boarding houses, sanatoriums, recreation centers. The Black Sea plant was one of the city-forming enterprises of Nikolaev.
Assembly shop of nuclear reactors for the aircraft-carrying cruiser "Ulyanovsk"
In the fall of 1988, for the first time in the history of domestic shipbuilding, the Ulyanovsk nuclear-powered heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser was laid down at the Black Sea Shipyard. It was supposed to build a series of 4 units of such ships, which would bring the Soviet fleet to a new quality level.
However, just at the time when the plant reached such high levels, serious problems began for the country for which it worked. In the second half of the 80s. the ever-accelerating destruction of the USSR has clearly begun. The Soviet Union was in need of modernization and reform, and at first the process, with the light hand of the new talkative General Secretary, was called "perestroika". However, very soon this word in the context of the current situation in the country became synonymous with disaster.
The Black Sea plant was at that time loaded with orders. Somewhere in Moscow, the passions and passions of all kinds of congresses of deputies of various degrees of "nationality" raged, Mikhail Gorbachev continued to tire the listeners with slurred speeches, in which there was less and less sense and more and more wasted time. And aircraft carriers were still being built in Nikolaev. The country still retained its unity, and materials and components from subcontractors came to the plant from all its distant and near edges.
But now the ever-increasing gusts of the cold and evil wind of change began to penetrate beyond the high walls of the plant. Prices went up, inflation began before the seemingly unshakable ruble. If in the initial calculations the cost of building the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser "Varyag" was a considerable sum of 500 million, then by 1990 it had confidently taken the billion-dollar mark and rapidly overcame it. Even the uninterrupted, until recently, deliveries of the necessary equipment and materials have now become more chaotic. Not all delays could now be attributed, as before, to indiscriminateness, which is not uncommon in production issues.
Socio-economic relations in society began to transform - the mass creation of cooperatives began, in which initiative and qualified workers and employees began to leave. However, it has not yet come to a massive outflow of personnel from the plant. By the summer of 1990, in addition to the Varyag heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser, which was being completed, and the Ulyanovsk nuclear-powered heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser, at the plant, a floating reloading base for nuclear submarines of project 2020 (code “Malina”) and the SSV-189 reconnaissance ship were under construction. "Dnieper". The latter was supposed to become a ship to illuminate the underwater situation, for which the presence of a unique hydroacoustic station "Dniester" with a lowered antenna was envisaged.
Submarine reloading floating base project 2020
All these ships carried out regular shipbuilding work, although, of course, priority was given to heavy aircraft carrying cruisers. In parallel, the plant fulfilled orders for the national economy. The shop for continuous assembly of large fishing trawlers worked continuously.
August 1991 forced destructive processes in the state mechanism, which at that time had become practically irreversible. In the same month, Ukraine unilaterally declared its independence. The enthusiasm of politicians and a significant part of society clearly smacked of joyous vigor. The pre-election campaign before the proclaimed referendum and the election of the first president went exclusively through one gate. The totality of theses and arguments, most of which was supposed to excite the imagination and the digestive tract, boiled down to the slogan: "To be rich, you have to be independent!"
Some idealists, taking a breath of "freedom", still hoped that in the new reality there would still be a place for the then powerful Ukrainian industry. Leonid Kravchuk, within the framework of the election campaign, did not fail to visit Nikolaev and the Black Sea plant. The sweet-voiced politician spared no honey for speeches full of admiration, praise and especially promises. To a direct question from the factory workers whether the heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers at the factory would be completed, Kravchuk answered without hesitation that, of course, they would. So the majority voted for Mr. Kravchuk, who seemed more "his own" (and promised to build aircraft carriers), and not for his opponent - Vyacheslav Chornovol, known for his long-standing political dissidence.
Few then could have imagined that the sugary sweetness from the promises of the future president would soon be replaced by the bitterness of disappointment. Of those few who did not have the habit of easily wearing glasses with pink lenses, there was Yuri Ivanovich Makarov, director of the plant. Like no one else, he understood what, how and where it was necessary to complete the complex production process for completing the construction of heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers. I understood that without a clear, planned and centralized control of this process, it would have no alternative to end with weeds in the shops and the hissing of a gas cutter.
In October 1991, the navy, still remaining a single structure, was forced to stop funding the construction of warships at the enterprise. For some time, by inertia, work was carried out on them, until they completely calmed down. Makarov did everything he could in that difficult and more and more hopeless situation. He got the ministries and departments of Russia and Ukraine. He used all his numerous connections and channels, demanded, asked and persuaded.
As it turned out, no one cared about the unique warships that were actually left abroad. Moscow was fixated on its own problems - ahead was the dividing of a colossal Soviet legacy, reforms more akin to legalized robbery, the launch of low-Earth orbit prices, and privatization. Kiev politicians were even less interested in some kind of aircraft carriers - in their picture of the worldview, this high achievement of engineering and design thought was prepared for a very insignificant place somewhere deep in the shadow of high mountains of fat, which now will not be taken away and eaten by the inhabitants of Russia.
For the operation of such a large and with a large staff of the plant, significant funding was required. The Kiev authorities made it clear that under the new conditions the plant will have to deal with such an annoying trifle as providing itself with orders. And the independent, but still not rich state has no funds to complete the construction of heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers. The authority of the enterprise was very high in the world - many foreign shipowners knew about its products firsthand. After all, back in Soviet times, the Black Sea Shipyard built merchant ships for export to Western countries.
The first customers appeared. These were representatives of the Norwegian brokerage company Libek & Partners, who began negotiations on the construction of 45,000 DWT tankers at the plant for the Norwegian shipowner Arneberg. The shipyard has not built ships of this type since the 1950s, when a series of Kazbek tankers were built.
Director Yuri Makarov faced a difficult choice: to start the Ulyanovsk, which was 70% ready for descent, under the gas cutting in order to free the slipway, or to cancel the contract. The unfinished aircraft-carrying cruiser suddenly turned out to be of no use to anyone - neither Russia, let alone Ukraine. In the meantime, nimble business people from overseas appeared at the plant, offering to buy metal from Ulyanovsk at a fabulous price of 550 dollars per ton. To celebrate, the Ukrainian government in early February 1992 issued a decree on the disposal of the nuclear-powered heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser. Yuri Ivanovich Makarov did not see the beginning of the agony of the first and, as it turned out, the last Soviet aircraft carrier with a nuclear power plant - on January 4, 1992, he fell seriously ill.
Having turned into heaps of packages with scrap metal, “Ulyanovsk” was no longer needed by the buyers, who, as it turned out, were ready to pay no more than $ 120 per ton. For many years, thousands of tons of metal lay throughout the plant, until finally they could not be sold.
"Dnieper" becomes "Slavutich"
In addition to the gigantic heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers, other ships under construction for the navy also experienced a difficult period of the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of them is the project 12884 ship "Pridneprovye". In 1987, the Central Design Bureau "Chernomorets" in Sevastopol, on the basis of a large freezer trawler of project 12880, developed a large reconnaissance ship on the "Gofr" theme.
The Chernomorskiy shipyard already had experience in building reconnaissance ships based on trawlers. Back in November 1984, a large Project 10221 Kamchatka reconnaissance ship was laid down at the enterprise. A feature of this scout was the presence of an experimental towed emitting antenna of the coastal hydroacoustic complex "Dniester". The complex, of which Kamchatka was a part, was capable of detecting submarines 100 km away by noise bearing and up to 400 km by echo bearing. The detection accuracy was 20 meters. The ship was equipped with a special lifting and lowering device.
Project 10221 Kamchatka reconnaissance ship
This complex and unique equipment was manufactured at the Black Sea Shipyard. The hoist was not a simple winch. It was a complex and laborious engineering structure. Initially, its tests were supposed to be carried out at sea with a special dummy that simulated an antenna. However, to save time, it was decided to go the other way. The Kamchatka corps was to be assembled from three parts. The middle section, where the lifting and lowering device was located, was assembled on the slab of the slipway number 1. Statistical tests were carried out after assembly and installation, with 900-ton gantry cranes used to simulate rolling. The docking of the three parts of the hull was then carried out in the factory transfer floating dock, alternately rolling the bow and stern parts of the hull onto it. The middle part was installed using floating cranes. Such a difficult operation significantly reduced the test time of the ship. Having entered service in 1986, "Kamchatka" went to the Far East, and became part of the Pacific Fleet.
The ship of project 12884, like the Kamchatka, was a large reconnaissance ship, or a ship to illuminate the underwater situation. It had to differ from its “progenitor”, a large freezer trawler, only by a narrow and high superstructure above the upper deck, where the lifting and lowering device was supposed to be located. To lower and raise the antenna of the "Dniester" complex, there was a through shaft closed from below inside the building. The full displacement of the reconnaissance aircraft was 5830 tons.
Preparations for the construction of the "Pridneprovye" (it was decided to call the new reconnaissance aircraft) began on January 1, 1988 on slipway number 1. At that time, floating bases of nuclear submarines of project 2020 were being built on it, and the ship had to be squeezed into a busy slipway schedule. The hull of project 12884, or order 902, was laid down in August 1988, and in 1990 it was launched. By the end of 1990, the readiness of the "Dnieper" was about 46%. Unlike Kamchatka, it was built to serve in the Northern Fleet. The pace of work on it was subsequently reduced in favor of concentrating production resources on the heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers Varyage and Ulyanovsk.
In the fall of 1991, funding for order 902, like other ships for the navy, ceased. In 1992, taking into account the high degree of readiness of the Dnieper region, the Ukrainian authorities decided to finish building the ship and introduce it into the fleet. However, no one was going to supply the independent state with the latest and unique drop antenna, without which its intended use would become problematic. The ship, given the vast premises provided for the installation of various reconnaissance equipment, was proposed to be completed as a headquarters, or command ship.
Control ship "Slavutich" in storage in Sevastopol
In August 1992, it was renamed "Slavutich", and in November of the same year the Ukrainian naval flag was raised on it. Service "Slavutich" took place in numerous flag demonstrations, calls at ports of foreign countries and in numerous exercises, including with the ships of the NATO bloc. After the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the Slavutich remains in storage in Sevastopol. Its fate has not yet been determined. Ironically, "Pridneprovye" - "Slavutich" turned out to be the last warship to date, fully completed by the Black Sea shipyard.
