From the late nineteenth century until nowadays Siberia as a “Land of Extremes” (Beauty and Thrill) has left its deep impact on German literature and autobiographies.
This essay tries to explore space as a visual category of national and intercultural communication. Whereas the legendary Western films are a well researched topic, historiography on modern films is rarely devoted to the genre of “Wild East”.
In late Imperial Russia the Siberian frontier had been increasingly integrated into the East Asian — Pacific Rim through railroad construction and peasant migration. It, therefore, resembled in many ways the ’American Wild West’. The ’Siberian experiment’ started with the building of the Transsiberian Railroad and it was interrupted by the October Revolution.