Construction began on
Vladimir Monomakh on 22 February 1881 at the
Baltic Works in
St. Petersburg, although the formal keel-laying ceremony was not held until 21 May. She was launched on 22 October 1882 and completed on 13 July 1883. Although the second vessel to be laid down in the
Dmitri Donskoy class,
Vladimir Monomakh was completed first. Due to constant changes during construction, the design of both vessels diverged considerably by the time of completion. The ship was named after
Vladimir II Monomakh,
Grand Prince of Kiev.
Vladimir Monomakh departed Kronstadt for the Mediterranean on 6 November 1889 where she remained for the next year. She joined the official escort for the
Tsarevich Nicholas II's visit to the Far East. The Tsarevich travelled aboard the and
Vladimir Monomakh provided protection. The two ships reached Singapore on 2 March 1891, and reached Vladivostok on 23 May. Once at Vladivostok, Captain
Oskar Stark was appointed commander of the ship and
Vladimir Monomakh was overhauled through August. She wintered over again at Nagasaki, departing for Europe on 23 April 1892 and reached Kronstadt in August, where the ship was given a thorough refit beginning on 22 September. The heavy sailing rig was replaced by three signal masts, her funnels were fixed in place, and her boilers were also upgraded.
Vladimir Monomakh was reclassified as a 1st Class Cruiser on 13 February 1892. On 2 October 1894 the ship, now under the command of Captain
Zinovy Rozhestvensky, was ordered back to the Mediterranean. In view of the
First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, the Council of Ministers ordered on 1 February 1895 that the Mediterranean Squadron reinforce the 2nd Pacific Squadron. She reached the Chinese
treaty port of
Chefoo on 16 April and became the
flagship of Rear Admiral
Yevgeni Ivanovich Alekseyev, 2nd in command of the Pacific Fleet, on 13 May.
Vladimir Monomakh remained at Chefoo until late in the year before sailing to Vladivostok and then to
Kobe, Japan in January 1896. The ship only remained there for a short time before she was ordered back to Kronstadt for a major modernization. Her obsolete 8-inch and 6-inch guns were replaced with five new 45-
calibre 6-inch and six
Canet guns. The ship's six original boilers were replaced by a dozen cylindrical boilers.
Vladimir Monomakh was transferred back to the Pacific Fleet in November 1897 and reached Nagasaki in February 1898. After the
Triple Intervention expelled the Japanese from
Port Arthur,
Vladimir Monomakh was part of the Russian force which subsequently occupied that strategic harbor. In June 1900, she transported troops involved in the suppression of the
Boxer Rebellion. In September 1900, on her return to Port Arthur, she accidentally rammed and sank the merchant vessel
Crown of Aragon. In December 1901, she rendezvoused with
Dmitri Donskoy at
Hong Kong, and the two ships returned to the
Mediterranean via the
Suez Canal.
Vladimir Monomakh remained in the Mediterranean until August 1902, and reached Kronstadt in October. In 1903–04 some of her Hotchkiss guns were replaced by . At nightfall, the Japanese torpedo boats engaged the surviving Russian warships and the cruiser claimed to have sunk one of her attackers at 8:25 p.m.
Vladimir Monomakh, mistaking one of her attackers for a Russian destroyer, was hit around 8:40 by a single torpedo which ruptured her hull near the No. 2 coal bunker, but sank the torpedo boat. The damage was severe but her crew kept her afloat and her engines operational, although she continued to take on water. The next morning, however,
Vladimir Monomakh headed towards
Tsushima Island and began to unload her wounded into her surviving boats. Captain Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popov gave the order to abandon ship, and ordered the
seacocks to be opened to scuttle the vessel rather than surrender it to the Japanese. The ship sank at 10:20 a.m. and the crew was captured by the Japanese auxiliary cruisers IJN
Sado Maru and IJN
Manshū.
Vladimir Monomakh was officially removed from the
navy list on 28 September 1905. ==Notes==