No explosion in Sevastopol harbour on the night of 28/29 October 1955.

[Foo Fighter]

The harbour/port is dredged/demined and Giulio Cesare/Novorossiysk is not sunk.

What do the Soviet union do with her?

 

[drwells42]

I suppose this is a call for speculation, so I'll speculate.

I think they would have done relatively little with her, at least in terms of modernization.

The Soviet Navy tended not to do major modernizations on old ships. Despite her radical modernization before the war, she was still an old ship.

They probably would have kept her running as best as possible as long as they could, and used her for "flag showing" operations. I suspect that she would not have lasted much longer than the Andrea Doria and the Caio Dullio. The Soviets got rid of Oktyabrskaya Revolutsia and Sevastopol around 1956, though admittedly they were not as heavily modernized.

DRW

 

[Dilandu]

She would likely serve till late 1950s, mainly as training ship, then got decommissioned. It's somewhat possible that she would got another refit, but hardly any major one.

 

[Dilandu]

The Soviet Navy tended not to do major modernizations on old ships. Despite her radical modernization before the war, she was still an old ship.

Yep. Some sources (not very reliable ones) indicates that there were plans to replace "Novorossysk" rear turret with cruise missile launchers - presumably, either "Strela" or KSCh ones - but it was most likely merely an option research (there were similar plans for "Sverdlov"-class, but only one ship was partially refitted as testbed - and the result was considered unsatisfactory)

 

[Yellow Palace]

She would likely serve till late 1950s, mainly as training ship, then got decommissioned. It's somewhat possible that she would got another refit, but hardly any major one.

It's hard to see what else could sensibly be done with a 40-year-old battleship - especially as the surviving GANGUT class had similar fates.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Actually.... without the explosion of the NOVOROSSIYSK, might Kuznetsov have remained Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy? After all, the explosion does seem to have been used as a pretext to get rid of him. And if he did stay on, would he have pursued a meaningfully different approach to Gorshkov?

 

[Colonial-Marine]

Was there any seriousness to supposed earlier plans to upgrade her fire control systems and thoroughly replace the secondary and AA battery?

By the time she was lost, Stalin had died, and the Soviet Union had given up plans for a large conventional surface fleet. I assume there was no longer any consideration of modernizing the ship by then, and her remaining career would have been spent as a training ship until being decommissioned and scrapped.

 

[Dilandu]

Was there any seriousness to supposed earlier plans to upgrade her fire control systems and thoroughly replace the secondary and AA battery?

Well, OTL during refits she got "Zalp-M" fire control radar for main guns, her light AA armament was replaced with Soviet one (twenty-four dual 37-mm B-11 guns and six single 70-K 37-mm guns). I need to check the sources about planned alterations in heavy AA guns.