She was named for Ivan Isakov, a Soviet admiral who commanded naval forces during World War II.[1] The vessels were designated as Large Anti-Submarine Ships and were initially designed with a primary mission of countering NATO ballistic missile submarines, particularly the United States Navy fleet of Polaris-equipped submarines. However, before the ships began to be built, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy Admiral Sergey Gorshkov changed the role of the ships to that of destroying NATO attack submarines to allow Soviet Yankee-class ballistic missile submarines to reach the central Atlantic and Pacific, from which the latter could launch their comparatively short-ranged ballistic missiles against targets in the United States.[2][3]