Stepan Osipovich Makarov was a Russian vice-admiral, commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, oceanographer, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He was a pioneer of insubmersibility theory, and developer of a Cyrillic-based semaphore alphabet. A proponent of icebreaker use, he supervised the first ever polar icebreaker construction. Makarov also designed several ships.

The Imperial Russian Navy operated as the navy of the Russian Tsardom and later the Russian Empire from 1696 to 1917. Formally established in 1696, it lasted until dissolved in the wake of the February Revolution of 1917. It developed from a smaller force that had existed prior to Tsar Peter the Great's founding of the modern Russian navy during the Second Azov campaign in 1696. It expanded in the second half of the 18th century and reached its peak strength by the early part of the 19th century, behind only the British and French fleets in terms of size.