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Many Central and Eastern European countries elected nationalist parties after the collapse of communism: a phenomenon often attributed to a combination of socioeconomic crisis and political instability. In 2010s, after the decay of other nationalist parties, Romania was seen as an exception to this rule, but the Covid-19 pandemic times have witnessed the rapid rise of a new nationalist party: the AUR (the Alliance for the Union of Romanians). Parliamentary elections in December 2020 saw this new political force gain 9.1% of the vote. Whereas previous nationalist parties in post-Communist Romania tended to appeal to more senior/elderly voters, there is evidence that the AUR vote is strong amongst men under the age of 35 who are educated to an elementary or high school level. This paper uses national electoral data, media analysis, and in-depth interviews with young, educated people to explore the spatial distribution of AUR support, the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has assisted the party's rise to prominence, and attitudes amongst university students to both the style and content of their politics. The paper concludes that the AUR offer a potent mix of old nationalism, religious faith, traditional family values and new ideological elements, such as environmentalism, anti-globalization, and anti-government critique to create a self-consciously 'alternative' political rhetoric. This is presented via new channels (especially social media) in a deliberately opportunistic, controversial, and spectacular manner. However, our investigation suggests that neither the content nor the style of this politics has widespread appeal among the more educated younger participants to the interview.

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By combining a process-tracing approach to several post-communist surveys with in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation about their postmemories of the communist past, this paper explores places associated with postmemories of communism amongst young people in contemporary Romania, focusing on two types of place: (1) mega-constructions, prisons and deportation sites; and (2) sites connected to everyday life (home, shops, hospitals). The findings suggest that "postmemories in places" are reproduced and co-produced by younger people in a nuanced and complex way. Spatial postmemories of communism are not simply formed by parental or grandparental experiences of communism itself, but are also shaped by experiences of the initial post-communist period. Younger people's complex range of "postmemories in places" toward the communist past are politically multivalent: postmemory of specific sites related to the cultural welfare of the communist past did not necessarily indicate a political commitment to its restoration amongst interviewees; and postmemories of political violence associated with particular sites did not preclude unilateral pride in national achievements prior to 1989. Furthermore, "postmemory in place" is not a passive process, but one that is shaped by both a critical attitude to the responses of older generations toward particular places, and the challenges of the capitalist present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]