Red Cravats

Red Cravats (Kiravic: Hūrithratśikya) are an electoral-demographic segment or political subculture in Kiravia typified as university-educated middle-class professionals with a strong affinity for Kirosocialist politics and the legacy of the Kiravian Union. For most Red Cravats, these sensibilities are received as family tradition and reinforced by participation in educational and social institutions that conserve Kiravian Union-era Red Culture. Red Cravats marry one another more often than not, and are considered by some to constitute a neo-tuva. The Red Cravats should be distinguished from the perhaps more internationally familiar phenomenon of affluent and educated people in post-industrial nations who incline toward social-democratic or New Left politics, from whom the Red Cravats differ in a number of important respects.

The "founding generation" of Red Cravats mostly held white-collar bureaucratic, scientific-technical, and academic positions at the time of Kiravian reunification in the mid-1980s, usually employed in the state or party apparatus or other public undertakings such as state universities, hospitals, laboratories, pedagogy, or industrial enterprises. Most such people had grown up during the more optimistic early-middle phase of Kirosocialist rule, after the ouster of the Devinist hardliners in the Swimming Pool Coup and before the stagnation and mounting dysfunction of Peak Kirosocialism. Mainly from proletarian or agrarian backgrounds by birth, they were beneficiaries of the Kiravian Union's successful effort to make higher education accessible to the the working class. After reunification they faced the effects of privatisation and decommunisation, facing job losses and job insecurity, salary and benefit reductions, and a loss of social position and prestige, marking them with lifelong resentment against the reunified government and its leading parties, and solidifying a nostalgia for the Kiravian Union that they would inculcate into their children. Even through a fair number of first-generation Cravats would go on to succeed in the private sector during the Kiravian economy's eventual rebound and most were able to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, their political inclinations and attachment to Kirosocialist institutions and mores would endure.

Red Cravats currently in the workforce are second- or third-generation, coming of age after the collapse of the Kiravian Union. Academically high-achieving, they tend to pursue careers in the professions or scientific research, and avoid the "bourgeois" (business, management, finance) or "parasitic" (communications, arts, psychology) fields to which many of their peers are attracted. Most of the second generation were educated at first-tier state universities or the agricultural-mineral universities; third-generation Red Cravats are more open to well-regarded private institutions than their parents had been. Whereas the founding generation of Cravats had been public employees, few of their descendants take federal jobs and many claim to be discriminated against in government hiring on the basis of their ancestry and political orientation.

Some who study the Red Cravats believe that their recension of Red Culture represents a post-reunification revival rather than a direct continuation, arguing that many of the customs, rituals, and symbols now characteristic of the Red Cravat community were out-of-fashion by the 1980s or had never attracted a mass following in the first place, and were instead adopted by opponents of liberalisation as protest symbols and group identity markers after the Union itself had gone. Indeed, the anthropologist Æmilius Pektravir, known for his immersive observation of the Red Cravat community in the Eriadun metropolitan area, notes that "in these circles there are some elders whose Red credentials are well-documented from the [1960s AD] and whose ideological fervour burns as an eternal flame uninterrupted by the events of [1985]. There are perhaps just as many, especially in the more technical occupations, who had not been Party members and might be described as "reactionary socialists", latecomers to the cause who boarded the train only after it had derailed."

Red Cravats are quite active in civil society, and are particularly prominent in volunteerism and the leadership of pillarised civil society groups, such as the Universitarian Socialists (a student union), the Pan-Kiravian Federation of Popular Sporting Associations (successor to the Socialist Party of Kiravia Sport Club), the Society of Supporters of Nature (an alpinism and trekking organisation), several left-wing regional radio stations, the New Socialist Youth Organisation and its affiliates, most korfball leagues, and many white-collar trade unions.

A defining characteristic of the Red Cravats is their unwavering support of the Popular Democratic Front and its predecessors, the People's Front and People's Alliance. Many from the community are actively involved in PDF-affiliated parties and campaigns at the state and local level. First- and second-generation Cravats are mostly associated with the hardline, nostalgia-driven "dark red" current within the PDF, while third-generation Cravats typify the "bright red" current, which presents itself as more pragmatic and forward-looking while promoting Red Culture and rejecting social democracy. M.K. Stornoğuvin, the popular PDF mayor of Denisar and leading exponent of "bright red" politics, has been described by the press as a second-generation Red Cravat.

Formal writing about the Red Cravat phenomenon invariably includes the caveat that Red Cravats do not have a clear group identity and that they generally take offence at the suggestion that they form a distinct group or new class within the Socialist pillar. They are even more hostile to the suggestion that they consciously consider educational qualifications and class background when choosing whom to marry. Members of the category usually perceive the term 'Red Cravat' as an outsiders' appellation and moderately derogatory, though some use it themselves in a jocular fashion. Responding to Kalergin's citation of Red Cravats as an example of a neo-tuva, Pektravir accepts that the group has the potential to become a tuva-like community in the future, whereas Ilarduv rejects the characterisation entirely, claiming that "endogamy among the Cravats is demonstrably not a remanifestation of tuva...the phenomenon of comfortable, highly-educated, and strongly partisan persons cleaving to partners of the same status and persuasion is universal, and the Cravats are but a peculiar instance."

The geographic distribution of Red Cravats can be approximated by analysis of data from political polls that survey voting preferences and demographic characteristics. A 2018 study by Ilarduv operationalises 'Red Cravat' as holding Degree II or higher, earning a household income of ◇X00,000 or more per annum, and voting "always" or "almost always" for PDF-pledged candidates in elections to the Federal Stanora. He finds that such people live mostly in the urban-core and inner-suburban rings of major metropolitan areas, as well as micropolitan cities - especially Union-era scientific centres and public university college towns. Most live in the Kiravic-speaking states, Upper Kirav, Central Kirav, or Andera. Few live in the South; a non-negligible number live in micropolitan Farravonia, but Ilarduv discounts the bulk of these as partisans of the Catholic socialist wing of the PDF and not related to the Red Cravat phenomenon. Sydona and regions outside of the former Kiravian Union were not studied.