Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress
play by George Bernard Shaw
Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress: A Revolutionary Romancelet is a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1917.
The play is obviously influenced by the Russian Revolution that year. It takes place in an imaginary country which has recently experienced a similar revolution. The two main characters are the daughter of the ruler, who once ran away to join the circus as a girl, and now supports the revolution, and an army officer who opposes it.
Characters
Annajanska
General Strammfest
Schneiderkind
First Soldier
Plot
General Strammfest, whose family has served the Panjandrums of Beotia for 700 years is unhappy about working for the new, very unstable, revolutionary government. He can't make up his mind whether to send his reports to the provisional government or one of the competing namely "Maximillianists" or the "Oppidoshavians". He hopes to restore the old regime. He soon learns that Grand Duchess Annajanska, the beautiful daughter of the Panjandrum, has escaped from the palace to which the royal family have been confined. Reports state that she has eloped with an officer. There is a mystery about the identity and plans of this officer.
The public source identifies “Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress” as play by George Bernard Shaw. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Annajanska, Bolshevik and Empress.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16930951. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.