They were based on Italian pre-Second World War concepts and designs, but with deployment on the North Atlantic and Arctic sea routes as a potential role and represent an intelligent approach with a modest armament of conventional 6 inch triple turrets on a large seaworthy hull able to run fast in rough water and fight her armament in a seaway. The expectation was that they would be accompanied by battlecruisers, but these were never completed or approved. By the mid 1950s the development of USN and Royal Navy jet strike aircraft meant gun cruisers increasingly could only be used for gunfire support and as command ships. Only 14 Sverdlovs were completed before Nikita Khrushchev called a halt to the programme, with 2 hulls being scrapped on the slip and 4 more partially complete Sverdlovs launched in 1954, being scrapped in 1959. Conventional cruisers were considered obsolescent by all navies with the advent of the guided missile, although many dissenting Russian admirals and officers still considered a cruiser effective in overcast weather in the late 1950s’ before the age of the all-weather carrier strike aircraft. A total of 30 ships were planned. Only the Mikhail Kutuzov is preserved, in Novorossiysk.