“Peter the Great” may be the world’s very last representative of classic missile cruisers, especially nuclear cruisers (the last American ship of this class, CG 73 “Port Royal,” entered service in the summer of 1994, and the nuclear-powered CGN-41 “Arkansas” back in October 1980). Despite the abundance of articles, little has been said about our unique nuclear cruisers with unsurpassed architecture, and in the literature, even foreign literature, there are elementary contradictions and gross errors. The criticism leveled at these ships, in the author's opinion, is unfounded. Therefore, we will try to fill the gap to the best of our ability so that fans can get to know these unique ships better and get a fairly complete picture of them.