How does Makine explore the tension between individualism and collectivism through the character of Alexei in A Life’s Music?

Alexei as a pianist

free

independent

carefree

Alexei as a soldier

follows everyone

marches in unison with the others

abides to the rules

definite collectivism

a part of the new military centred society

Homo sovieticus

a pejorative term used to refer to the average conformist person in the Soviet Union

popularized by writer Aleksandr Zinovyev

the meaning

term created by the opponents of the Soviet Union to describe
what they saw

the 'New Soviet Man'

indifferent to the result of their labour

Lack of initiative and avoidance of taking any individual responsibility for anything

Jerzy Turowicz wrote: "it's a person enslaved, incapacitated, deprived of initiative, unable to think critically; he expects – and demands – everything to be provided by the state, he cannot and doesn't want to take his fate in his own hands"

Indifference to common property and to petty theft from the workplace, either for personal use or for profit

Chauvinism

The Soviet Union's restrictions on travel abroad and strict censorship of information in the media (as well as the abundance of propaganda) aimed to insulate the Soviet people from Western influence.

existance non-public "ban lists" of Western entertainers and bands

Obedience to or passive acceptance of everything that government imposes

authoritarianism

Leszek Kolakowski, the Short course history of the CPSU

"Over the years, Soviet people were forced to continuously repeat and accept constantly changing editions of the Short course, each containing a slightly different version of the past events. This inevitably led to forming "a new Soviet man: ideological schizophrenic, honest liar, person always ready for constant and voluntary mental self-mutilations" - Kolakowski

The "Soviet man" is characterised by his tendency to follow the authority of the state in its assessment of reality, to adopt an attitude of mistrust and anxiety towards anything foreign and unknown, and is convinced of his own powerlessness and inability to affect the surrounding reality; from here, it is only a step towards lacking any sense of responsibility for that reality. His suppressed aggression, birthed by his chronic dissatisfaction with life, his intense sense of injustice and his inability to achieve self-realisation, and his great envy, all erupt into a fascination with force and violence, as well as a tendency towards "negative identification" – in opposition to "the enemy" or "the foreigner". Such a personality suits a quasi-tribal approach to standards of morality and law (the things "our people" have a right to do are condemned in the "foreigner").


— "Conflict-dependent Russia. The domestic determinants of the Kremlin's anti-western policy", Maria Domańska

According to philosopher Artem Magun, the disappointment of a group of Russian intellectuals including Zinovyev and Levada in the Soviet project had extremely negative consequences in the 1970s: elitism in the Soviet intelligentsia, the emergence of an anti-national and anti-populist pathos ("we are heavenly men, we think, but there is gloom and some anthropological degenerates around"). Despite the intellectuals' hypothetical affiliation with the homo soviets, this approach was just a pretense, Magun concluded. Magun concludes that the hostility of the intelligentsia towards the people was the cause of its subsequent (in the 1990s) betrayal, which in turn led to the counter-attack of "Putinist populism"

wants to play freely

different social groups

individualism

individualism

moral stance

political philosophy

ideology

social outlook

"the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization"

collectivism

prioritization of the the group over one self

the worth of the individual

common values and goals

Marxist-Leninist ideologies

intelligencia

military

workers

a collective

the more educated part of society

"above" others

working together to achieve a goal

the women working to build the bridge

hierarchy

the major part of society

Alexei's family at the beginning

force in the masses

time of war

important part of the Soviet Union

plays during the battle

almost creats a bubble of peace around him