The proposed schedule places carrier construction near the first Project 26 Kirov-class cruisers, using the shipbuilding infrastructure available around Leningrad and Nikolayev. Eight years of training-carrier operation by 1935 would give designers practical evidence before committing to ocean-going ships. The carrier might instead start a year earlier as a machinery and hull-development step before the armoured cruisers, with service possible around 1937-38. This is an industrially plausible counterfactual schedule, with no claim that such a carrier was historically ordered.
Notable Point · 52:11-55:34
Carrier construction alongside the Kirov class
Existing Baltic and Black Sea yards could lay down carriers around 1934-35 after years of Caspian operating experience.