 Construction of the first four ships was plagued with difficulties as the Soviet shipbuilding and related industries were not prepared to build such large ships . One battleship , Sovetskaya Belorussiya , was cancelled on 19 October 1940 after serious construction flaws were found . Construction of the other three ships was suspended shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 , and never resumed . All three of the surviving hulls were scrapped in the late 1940s . 
