Trapped behind the “Golden Curtain”: Labouring Relationships in Barbara Gräftner’s Mein Russland and Ruth Mader’s Struggle

In spring 2009 two news stories shed light on the complexities of Austria’s relationship with its eastern neighbours. The first noted the outrage of politicians and analysts at economist Paul Krugman’s speculations that heavy Austrian investment in the unstable region of eastern Europe – the equivalent of 70% of its GDP, which is more than any other country – makes Austria a candidate for state bankruptcy (Bayer; Evans-Pritchard 4; Höller). The second concerned the interior minister’s proposal to initiate a special police unit (“SOKO-Ost”) to deal with increasing thefts in eastern Austria, a trend that that some politicians allege is a result of the lifting of controls of Austria’s borders after the Schengen Agreement’s 2007 extension (Perterer 1; Stuiber). These two reports make visible conflicting Austrian reactions to the continuing border openings since the fall of the Iron Curtain. On the one hand, eastern Europe continues to be regarded as a promising economic and political opportunity, a hope bolstered by the 2004 EU expansion and fuelled by an assumption of Austria’s special historical relationships with its neighbours. On the other, the second story addresses the perception of eastern Europe as a threat, as the same opening that welcomes the free movement of capital is reprimanded for allowing illegal migration and illicit activities across the border.

The contradictions in these stories are recent illustrations of Austria’s longstanding ambivalent relationship with eastern Europe, an amorphous term that, in the Austrian context, reaches from the former Yugoslavia into the former Soviet Union. Austria has touted its ties to this region – through its monarchic past (Busek 235–36; Mokre 431), its mythic self-conception as bridge between East and West (Gehler and Kaiser 97–99), or as an alternative between Cold War powers (Boyer 312–13; Mokre 431). But it has also disavowed these ties, especially through its post-1989 redefinitions, which have pushed its alignment towards the West and EU membership, which Austria utilized to exert leverage against its eastern neighbours both through unrealistic unionization and salary treaties and also membership-veto threats concerning nuclear power plants at the border (Liebhart and Pribersky 119–20). Eastern Europe has also been a target of the xenophobic far right, which has exploited rising anxieties about cultural identity and immigration and painted eastern European countries as centres of violent crime, drugs, prostitution, and above all mafia control (El Refaie 219–22; Kryżanowski and Wodak 71–122).

Since the mid-1990s, Austrian cinema has examined the country’s shifting self-definitions in response to post-1989 transformations of the European landscape (see Dassanowsky). Central to this undertaking has been a focus on eastern Europe, with both new and established filmmakers turning their cameras toward eastern Europe and especially toward eastern Europeans in Austria. Prominent examples of films set in eastern Europe include Andrea Maria Dusl’s Blue Moon (2002), the omnibus documentary Über die Grenze (2005), and Paul Rosdy’s documentary Neue Welt (2005); examples of films focussing on eastern Europeans in Austria are Barbara Albert’s Nordrand (1999), Jörg Kalt’s Crash Test Dummies (2005), and Ulrich Seidl’s Import/Export (2007), which, as the title suggests, has narrative strands in Austrian and in eastern Europe. This cinema has been described as a “feel-bad cinema” (Lim 14) for its predilection for depicting the banal underbelly of Austrian society, which many filmmakers carefully dissect through strong formal agendas and unflinching hyperrealism (Hermes 10–11). In depicting eastern Europeans, recent films examine Austrian arrogance, condescension, aversion, and fear regarding these figures, yet also exotic attraction and romantic idealization of simplicity and innocence. Two feature-film debuts by women directors, Barbara Gräftner’s Mein Russland (2002) and Ruth Mader’s Struggle (2003), address Austria’s relationship with eastern Europe and larger continental transformations with stories about cross-border relationships and the conditions imposed on their eastern European female characters. These two films not only emerged on the cusp of global economic upheaval and the EU expansion debates, but are also finely attuned...