The disorganized, shocking play of light in the city gives way to the focalizing power of the Kremlin, which is able to organize and focus the force of individuals into a single concentrated locus: “All the colors of Moscow converge prismatically here, at the center of Russian power. Beams of excessive brilliance from the car headlights race through the darkness. The horses of the cavalry, which has a large drill ground in the Kremlin, shy in their light.” Figuring Russian life as a luxurious spectrum, the Kremlin is the lens that focuses Benjamin’s experience of Moscow’s quotidian landscape, reconfiguring small moments of peasant-like daily activities through the emblem of Russian power they perpetuate. Light itself is the agent of the particular form of modernity that Benjamin discovers in the Moscow (the electric car headlights frighten the cavalry horses, a military division that is already obsolete by 1927, the year Benjamin visits Moscow) and through its figuration the political economy of the place finds body in his writing.