If one viewed the period of perestroika and the first post-Soviet year as a period of societal “arousal,” then the show of force occurred in 1993, when Yeltsin shelled the parliament building. It had the effect one would expect: society felt radically simplified, Yeltsin affirmed his role as leader—though the Russian vozhd’ or even the German Führer was really the word Gudkov had in mind—and, as always happens in times of radical simplification, nationalism flourished.
