| abstract | - The Russian battleship Poltava (Russian: Полтава) was a Petropavlovsk-class battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy. She was one of eight Russian pre-dreadnought battleships captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Poltava was built at the Galernii Island shipyard, one of a three-ship class. She was the only Petropavlovsk-class battleship to survive the war. Her sister ships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol were both lost, Petropavlovsk sunk by a mine, and Sevastopol scuttled after the capitulation of Port Arthur. Poltava was sunk during the siege of Port Arthur in December 1904, but was raised by the Japanese soon after and renamed Tango (丹後). She saw little combat service during her Japanese career, aside from the Siege of Tsingtao. As Japan and Imperial Russia were allies at the time, the Japanese government decided to transfer Tango back to Russia. Returned in 1916, she was renamed Chesma (Russian: Чесма). She joined the Russian revolutionary fleet in October 1917, but was captured by the British, who used her as a barracks hulk to house Bolshevik prisoners. Abandoned by the British and recaptured by the Bolsheviks, she was scrapped in 1924.
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