Soviet Union: changing times

A rock concert, indicative of the Soviet Union's newly-instituted policy of glasnost, brackets this documentary centering on Moscow teenager Alec Mihailantz. Alec, an aficionado of heavy metal music, is seen in physics, English and literature classes at school and at home with his parents, a doctor and an editor of a law journal. In voiceover narration, the teenager comments on the new styles, ideas and freedoms which are rapidly changing life in the Soviet Union. Despite the loosening of certain strictures, some persist. Alec is required to obtain an identity card or city passport which enables the government to track his movements; a challenge to a teacher's veracity results in a phone call to his father. Outlining his country's tumultuous past and the possible fragmentation of the Soviet Union's fifteen republics, Alec conveys guarded optimism regarding the future.