A short review is presented of the cylinder problem as a vehicle for developments in the theory of linear viscoelastic stress analysis. This is followed by the solution of the problem of a compressible, hollow circular viscoelastic cylinder encased in and bonded to an elastic cylindrical shell. The analysis includes the effects of arbitrarily varying angular velocity and internal pressure, and the inner surface may ablate at an arbitrary rate. Material properties are incorporated in the form of numerical values of the relaxation modulus in shear, and the bulk modulus. Results are presented and comparison made with previous solutions which deal with more restricted situations.