This particular egg was delivered to Alexandra Fyodorovna, the Russian Tsarina, on Easter Eve of 1916 on behalf of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II by Fabergé's son Eugène while Nicholas II was away at the Russian front of World War I; Carl Fabergé was himself busy delivering the other Easter egg for 1916, the Order of St. George Egg, to Nicholas's mother, the Dowager Empress Maria.

The "surprise" fitting within it is a miniature painting by Vassilii Zuiev on an easel made of gold and steel.

As such Easter gifts between the Tsar and Tsarina went, the Steel Military egg is sometimes considered banal and kitsch in its austere style and comparatively bland, mostly colorless appearance, especially once the blackened surface had been polished to resemble chrome.

Much of this is a reflection not of a shift in Fabergé's artistic style or intent but rather of the dwindling resources and workmen that Fabergé still had at his disposal to create the egg— it was the last that his workshop successfully created and delivered to the Tsarina before the Tsar was deposed, the Russian government collapsed, and the nation entered financial destitution.

[1] The Steel Military Egg appears in The Strangelove Gambit, a Nikolai Dante novel by David Bishop.