The Defiantly Unfashionable Dr LeDonne

John P. LeDonne’s Forging of a Unitary State represents the culmination of a long and illustrious career in the study of various aspects of Russia’s early-modern experience. This review offers a critical assessment of this important monograph, focusing above all on the author’s contrarian conception of Russia-as-empire and his defiant determination to shun the fashionable in favor of the fundamental. It pays particular attention to LeDonne’s claim that in the crucial period between the reigns of Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645–76) and Nicholas I (1825–55) Russia was aspiring to construct not an empire rooted in difference, but a unitary state featuring broadly homogeneous territorial organization, institutions, and practices. It also explores “superstratification,” LeDonne’s distinct conception of elite integration. It ends with questions that remain unanswered in LeDonne’s account.