 The Soviet shipbuilding and related industries proved to be incapable of supporting the construction of so many large ships at the same time . The largest warships built in the Soviet Union prior to 1938 were the 8 @,@ 000 @-@ metric @-@ ton ( 7 @,@ 874 @-@ long @-@ ton ) <unk> @-@ class cruisers , and even they had suffered from a number of production problems , but the Soviet leadership appeared to ignore the difficulties encountered in the construction of the <unk> class when ordering 14 much more ambitious ships . Construction of two more ships planned for Leningrad and Nikolayev had to move to the brand @-@ new Shipyard Nr. 402 in Molotovsk because the existing shipyards could not be expanded to handle so many large ships . <unk> for these two ships had to be manufactured at Leningrad and shipped via the White Sea – Baltic Canal to Molotovsk . Also , the turret shop at <unk> proved to be too poorly equipped to assemble the 406 mm mountings and the propeller shafts had to be ordered in 1940 from Germany and the Netherlands as the domestic plants were already <unk> with orders . Shipbuilding steel proved to be in short supply in 1940 , and a number of batches were rejected because they did not meet specifications . Armor plate production was even more problematic as only 1 @,@ 800 metric tons ( 1 @,@ 772 long tons ) of the anticipated 10 @,@ 000 metric tons ( 9 @,@ 842 long tons ) were delivered in 1939 , and more than half of that was rejected . Furthermore , the armor plants proved to be incapable of making cemented plates over 230 mm , and inferior face @-@ hardened plates had to substitute for all <unk> over 200 millimeters ( 8 in ) . 
