Stalin’s Baltic Fleet attempted to escape from Tallinn during the bleak days of summer 1941. Here's What You Need to Know: Events at Tallinn were comparable to the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk over a year earlier. Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? It scuttles the fleet!” The joke referred to sad events in Russian naval history. In 1855, after the Crimean War, Russia lost the right to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea, and in 1904-1905 during the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, Russia lost two out of its three fleets. In 1941, the Soviet Union, born out of old Imperial Russia’s ashes, almost lost its Baltic Fleet.