Twin Peaks' cult status in the post-Soviet space offers a window to explore legacies and memories otherwise left untouched. Source: 8tracks.com“If you stop crying and come with us, we’ll let you read The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.” It was the early 1990s in Ukraine, and someone had just set the door of our family apartment on fire — not an entirely bizarre occurrence in the chaos of the early post-Soviet years. My father’s business was under pressure from criminals, and the late evening fire was clearly meant to send a message.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, my parents packed me off to stay with friends, for my own safety and sanity. I was hysterical, of course, and didn’t want to go. It was the mention of Jennifer Lynch’s Twin Peaks spin-off novel — newly translated into Russian and featuring Laura Palmer as narrator — that got me to let go of my mother and step into the dark hallway that still smelled like smoke.
Just like David Lynch’s show, the book was entirely inappropriate for a girl in elementary school. It also sadly related to my life and my world, the strange world we all now occupied — where nothing made sense and the senselessness was almost comical at times, if it wasn’t for the fact that it could also maim and kill and stun the psyche, as I found out time and time again.
