page_title: Yuri Rall
section_title: Rebuilding the fleet
hierarchical_section_title: Yuri Rall / Rebuilding the fleet
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet battleship Marat, 1939. Русский: Линейный корабль Марат, 1939 год.
context_page_description: Yuri Fedorovich Rall was an officer of the Imperial Russian and Soviet Navies. He saw action during the First and Second World Wars, and rose to the rank of vice-admiral.
  Rall began his service with the Imperial Navy, undertaking training and instruction at the Kronstadt Naval Engineering School and the Naval Cadet Corps, with practical experience as a midshipman in the Black Sea Fleet. He served in the Baltic Fleet during the First World War, graduating to his own commands towards the end of the war. A popular officer for his attention to the lower ranks, he supported the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution, and was elected to one of the ship committees. During the Russian Civil War he fought against the White Finns and British interventionist forces. As an experienced officer he was tasked with several staff positions after the war, and took a leading role in re-establishing the fleet's strength in the early Soviet period. He took a particular interest in training new officers, and took several roles in the naval academies.
  After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Rall was given important tasks in the defence and evacuation of Soviet forces.
context_section_description: In 1921 he was appointed Chief of Operations of the Baltic Fleet Headquarters, and from 1921 to 1922 served as chief navigator of the Main Navigation Directorate's minesweeping department. From 1922 to 1923 he was flag navigator at the fleet headquarters, and from 1923 to 1926 commanded the battleship Marat. The fleet had suffered from neglect during the Civil War, and few were operational. Rall was approached by Pavel Dybenko and was informed that Lenin had recommended restoring the fleet's warships.  Rall oversaw the repairs of a number of ships in his capacity as senior naval commander at Kronstadt, and the Marat was joined by the battleship Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, the cruiser Aurora, the training ship Komsomolets and several other reconditioned ships. Rall then took the squadron on a five thousand mile voyage from Kronstadt to Arkhangelsk, via Bergen and Murmansk, then returning to Kronstadt, demonstrating Soviet intentions to rebuild its naval power.
  In 1926 Rall took the higher academic courses at the Naval Academy, and from later that year served as the head of the M.V. Frunze Higher Naval School and as commander of the fleet's detachment of training ships. Nikolai Kuznetsov, later admiral of the fleet of the Soviet Union, recalled that "Yuri Fedorovich Rall, an old experienced sailor, taught me a lot. He often stood on the bridge next to me and, in the most difficult conditions of mooring or maneuvering, gave reasonable advice ... He taught me how best to follow the movement of my ship along coastal lights, how to moor in a pressing wind, what to look for in very narrow places or during storms ... He gave good instructions on how to bring up personnel. In my memory were the words of Yuri Fedorovich: "When passing a formation, never look past people. Remember that they all look at you. Try and look at each of them." In 1930 Rall was appointed Deputy Head of the Navy's Training and Border Directorate, and from 1932 commanded the Black Sea Fleet's cruiser brigade. In 1935 he took up a teaching position at the Naval Academy, and from 1936 to 1939 was a Head of Department at the V. I. Lenin Military-Political Academy. Rall then served as head of the Navy's Combat Training Directorate, and at the same time was deputy chairman of the Main statutory commission. In 1940 flag ranks were introduced in the Red Army and the Navy. On 4 August 1940 Rall was awarded the rank of rear admiral.
caption: The battleship Marat, Rall's command from 1923 to 1926.
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