The list of aircraft carriers of the Soviet Union and Russia includes all aircraft carriers built by, proposed for, or in service with the naval forces of the Soviet Union or Russia. Though listed as aircraft carriers, none of these ships (with the possible exception of the Ulyanovsk) were or are true aircraft carriers. They are ASW helicopter equipped ships or aircraft-carrying cruisers.
| Name | Class | Type | Commissioned | Decommissioned | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moskva | Moskva class | Helicopter carrier | 1964 | 1991 | |
| Leningrad | Moskva class | Helicopter carrier | 1968 | 1991 | |
| Kiev | Kiev class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | 1972 | 1993 | Sold to Chinese company. Converted to Military theme park and then hotel. |
| Minsk | Kiev class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | 1975 | 1993 | Sold initially for scrap. Re-sold to Chinese company as museum piece |
| Novorossiysk | Kiev class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | 1978 | 1993 | Scrapped in 1997 in Pohang South Korea. |
| Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov | Kiev class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | 1982 | 1996 | Sold to India, renamed INS Vikramaditya |
| Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov | Admiral Kuznetsov class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | 1991 | In Service | |
| Varyag (Liaoning) | Admiral Kuznetsov class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | In Service (PRC Navy). Not completed during Soviet era, hulk sold by Ukraine to China, completed 2012 and commissioned as training vessel Liaoning | ||
| Ulyanovsk | Ulyanovsk class | Aircraft carrying cruiser | Not completed, scrapped shortly after keel laying, during Soviet era |
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“Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers—all.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“Nothing an interested foreigner may have to say about the Soviet Union today can compare with the scorn and fury of those who inhabit the ruin of a dream.”
—Christopher Hope (b. 1944)
“All is possible,
Who so list believe;
Trust therefore first, and after preve,
As men wed ladies by license and leave,
All is possible.”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)
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To glut the carriers of her epidemics—
Nor did the peach complain.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“So they lived. They didn’t sleep together, but they had children.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
—Marilyn French (b. 1929)