Ostern

The Ostern (Eastern) or Red Western (also known as "Borscht Western") was the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries' take on the Western. The term refers to two related genres:

Red Westerns of the first type are often compared to Spaghetti Westerns, in that they use local scenery to double up for the American West. In particular, Yugoslavia, Mongolia and the Southern USSR were used. Some of the East German films were called Sauerkraut Westerns.

Easterns provide a counterpoint to familiar mythologies and conventions of the original genre, particularly as the makers were on the other side of a propaganda war without parallel, the Cold War, and this is partially why many have never been shown in the west, at least not until after the Cold War ended. In a war in which many fabrications were made on both sides, there was often a lingering fascination with the cultural developments in enemy countries.

Westerns have proven particularly transferable in the way that they create a mythology out of relatively recent history, a malleable idea that translates well to different cultures. In Soviet Union, the Ostern uses the generic calling cards of the American Western to dramatise the Civil War in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, in which the Red Army fought against Islamic Turkic 'Basmachi' rebels. By substituting, 'red' for 'blue' and 'Turk' for Mexican or Indian, there are the same opportunities for a sweeping drama played out against a backdrop of wide-open spaces. The Ural Mountains can be equivalent to Monument Valley, the Volga River for the Rio Grande. Add the gun slinging ethos, horse riding, working the land, pioneers of a sort (ideological often in this case), the bounty hunter traversing difficult terrain with outlaw in tow, railroading and taming the wild frontier and you have a generic mirror image of the American genre. One story could have many incarnations: the British Lost Patrol (1929) was set in Mesopotamia but was remade among others as the 1936 Soviet film The Thirteen, featuring Basmachi antagonists, and as the 1953 American Western Last of the Comanches.

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