Kiravian Union
The Kiravian Union (Coscivian: Kiravix Thūra) was a single-party socialist state that governed Great Kirav and several historically Kiravian island possessions from 21144 to 21185. Under the leadership of the Kirosocialist Party the Kiravian Union undertook a campaign of centralised statebuilding and state-directed economic and social modernisation with the goal of developing a "spiritual socialist civilisation" independent of Occidental capitalist forces. Despite some successes towards its guiding political objectives, the Kiravian Union suffered from economic and administrative inefficiencies and its heavy-handed methods of economic restructuring and political repression strained its already tepid popular legitimacy. A series of nationwide labour strikes and dissension within the ruling party during the mid 21180s led to multiparty elections and ultimately the dismantling of the régime by the National Renewal Movement.
Kiravian Union ꅆ꒼ ꒑꒜ Kiravix Thūra | |||||||||
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| 1934–1984 | |||||||||
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Motto: Kéarita, Āra Plānond, Soksyalrisēn! "Republic, Power to the People, Socialism!" | |||||||||
| Capital | Kartika | ||||||||
| Common languages | Kiravic Coscivian (official) | ||||||||
| Religion | Secular state | ||||||||
| Government | Single-party socialist republic | ||||||||
| Premier | |||||||||
• 21146-21148 | A.R. Paśkirin | ||||||||
• 21182-21185 | E.D. Ástukéter | ||||||||
• Legislature | Ixtísovèt | ||||||||
• Constitutional body | Union Council | ||||||||
| Historical era | Postwar Era | ||||||||
• Declared | 1934 | ||||||||
• Denounced | 1984 | ||||||||
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History
The Kiravian Union was declared in 21146. The Kirosocialist Party had controlled the Prime Executure and the Stanora of the Kiravian Federal Republic since [YEAR], operating within the parameters of the existing constitution. Its capture of additional state legislatures by 21146 accorded it the political trifecta necessary to amend the constitution unilaterally. The Stanora did so in 21146, repealing the entire constitution and replacing it with the Constitution of the Kiravian Union, which laid out a single-party state largely following the classical Devinist model. The Stanora was immediately converted into the Supreme Soviet (Ixtísovèt) and all non-Kirosocialist Delegates automatically forfeit their seats. The sole dissenting Kirosocialist vote, S.P. Akēvarin, vacated his seat the next day upon his expulsion from the Party.
Initially, the declaration of the Kiravian Union was fiercely resisted in parts of the country where the Kirosocialist Party had not been popular. State governments that refused to recognise the new order were swiftly suppressed by the Union authorities across most of Great Kirav. Federalist loyalists on the West Coast folded under the pressure of an economic blockade. In South Kirav opponents of the régime put up substantial resistance but were largely defeated by 21149 (a low-level rural insurgency would continue for the duration of the Union's existence).
Mid-Kirosocialism
Late Kirosocialism
Downfall
Territorial Extent
The Kiravian Union claimed to inherit all territorial holdings and treaty rights held by the Kiravian Federal Republic. With the exception of the Sydona Islands, most Kiravian overseas possessions and protectorates initially refused to recognise the Union's authority, and the Union's ability to assert it authority overseas was crippled by mass defections from the Kiravian Navy and the flight of naval vessels to Scapa and Æonara in the Union's first days of existence.
Æonara, Atrassica, the Krasoa Islands, Seváronsa, Saint Kennera, Pribraltar, Scapa, and Kiravian Cusinaut would remain permanently outside of KU control.
Politics and Governance
The Kiravian Union was structured as a single-party state according to the Devinist model.
External Relations
Relations with the Kiravian Remnant
See: Kiravian Sunderance
Both the Kiravian Remnant and Kiravian Union claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all Kiravian lands, and as such neither government recognised the other. After an initial period of rejecting all contact with one another, the two governments quietly established lines of regular informal communication beginning in 19XX, mostly through intermediary countries such as The Cape?.
Foreign Relations
The Kiravian Union cultivated and maintained fraternal ties with other socialist states, such as Ardmore. Anti-communist governments, particularly in Levantia, Caphiria, and South Crona, continued to recognise the Remnant as the country's legitimate government, but many engaged in some degree of informal relations with the Union through unofficial channels.
During its initial Devinist phase, the Union charted an actively revisionist and (indirectly) interventionist course in foreign policy, lending various forms of support to sympathetic socialist and revolutionary forces abroad. As time went on and the tide of revolutions ebbed, the Union gradually settled into its diplomatically isolated position, moving towards a more pragmatic stance of geopolitical neutrality and bilateral relations concerned primarily with trade.
Economy
The Kiravian Union had a socialist economy overseen by the Economic and Social Soviet (Timoniúlix-Askolax Sovèt), an overarching body with authority over socialist economic planning, redistribution systems, state-owned enterprises and national industries, monetary policy, sector-specific regulation of non-state enterprise, natural resource management, social and labour policy, development projects, price controls, and capital allocation. The ESS was responsible for formulating and implementing quinquennial plans, directing investment, coördinating material balance transfers between non-market components of the economy, and overseeing research into applied mathematical methods and computational technologies to improve socialist economic management.
Agriculture
In accordance with the writings of Kiravian social-nationalist theorist Mixîl Paśkirin, the Kiravian Union generally respected the property and inheritance rights of freeholding family farmers (though *ad hoc* and arbitrary confiscations were known to occur). Collectivisation of large expropriated estates was attempted in many places across the country but ultimately remained in effect mostly in the Sydona Islands, South Kirav and parts of the Baylands. Improvements in agronomic technologies allowed for some large collective farms to be established de novo in parts of the Southwest, Near West, and Western Highlands as part of agricultural colonisation programmes.
Achieving food independence for Great Kirav was an important but elusive goal for the Kirosocialists. During the early phase of Kirosocialist rule, it was widely assumed that scientific socialist planning and technological advancement would solve the problem in short order, but as time wore on and national self-sufficiency in food failed to materialise, the government was forced to approach the issue from other angles, such as initiatives to slow population growth, massive investments in aquaculture and pelagic fishing fleets, and numerous bureaucratic efforts at "ration optimisation" which often resulted in fraudulent accounting and the distribution of incorrect or incomplete ration units as administrators struggled to meet central production targets. The government also dedicated much effort to obtaining new sources of nutrition, whether by the introduction of new crops and crop varieties suitable for cultivation in more marginal areas of Great Kirav, the rediscovery of famine foods from premodern times, and the harnassing of unusual and ersatz foodstuffs such as insects. As Mid-Kirosocialism turned to Late Kirosocialism, it had become patently obvious to the general population that state rations were becoming so adulterated with alternative protein sources and fillers like tree flour, kelp agarose, and acorn meal that they were often no longer recognisable as the foods they purported to be, often leading to public unrest.
Society & Culture
The Kiravian Union inherited a multifarious society with an ancient Coscivian heritage and a complex patchwork of nesting and overlapping ethnic, linguistic, religious, tribal, regional, and local identities and communities, easily interpreted as either a vibrant and pluralistic country with a strong civil society or - as was the view of the Kirosocialist Party - an overly particularistic society with deeply entrenched parochial, caste, class, and local rivalries and antiquated traditions that arrested social and economic progress and the development of class consciousness and a modern civic culture. The concept of socialism as a cultural framework and not a mere economic system was central to Kirosocialism, and most cultural trends and developments from the era of the Kiravian Union can be understood in the context of State and Party efforts to forge a "progressive Coscivian culture" and "spiritual socialist civilisation" and the tension between this effort and the strong bonds of traditional Coscivian culture.
Social Change
Urbanisation, nuclearisation of the family and its mitigation by the microdistrict and work-unit. Femoid liberation and organised youth activities. Curtailment of customary law.
Socialist attempts to break up ethnic neighbourhoods. Failure of said attempts and reversion to Neo-Verticalism (the ethnic neighbourhood becomes the work unit). Socialist efforts to stop rival football fans from murdering each other in Valēka, and the failure thereöf.
Architecture and Urban Planning
Constructivism, Structuralism, Brutalism. Socialist urbanism versus Disurbanism.
Microdistricts and monotowns. Linear cities.
Education
Qórellin Method. Instructionalism. Ideological education.
The Kiravian Union strongly emphasised scientific and technical education. Higher education in these fields was divided between a "scientific studies" track preparing students for graduate work and research careers, and "productive studies" directly preparing students for work in industry. This distinction persists in the present day, a rough analogue of the distinction between "theoretical" and "applied" studies in the West, but with larger implications.
The Kiravian Union is credited with greatly expanding working-class Kiravians' access to higher education through its grand expansion of public universities and bureaucratic regularisation of admissions processes at major established universities, which came under varying degrees of state control or influence. Eight in ten public universities in Kiravia today were founded during Kirosocialist rule. As part of the "Democratization Campaign in Education" (Thāruārkaktorpistran Léisagrenē), the government officially banished High Coscivian, previously the main language of academia in the country, from higher education, as well as vernacular languages at the "ethnic colleges". This effort was only partially successful, and a working knowledge of the classical language remained necessary for higher-level research in many fields. Tuition at public universities was free to the children of peasants, workers, and soldiers. New public colleges during this era were the first to be built with institutional dormitories, and room and board were subsidised for students from proletarian and peasant families, while at preëxisting state universities and the old establishmentarian colleges equivalent services were provided mainly by student unions.
In Kiravian higher education, degrees are not awarded for the satisfactory completion of credit-hours (this is usually a prerequisite for graduation, but not always), but rather for a "monstration" (High Coscivian: trua) showing consummate mastery of course material. Depending on the institution and course of study, this could take the form of ōrstava (an oral examination by senior faculty) or amderen (a written thesis). Under the Kiravian Union, the ōrstava was discontinued for undergraduates outside of a few historically Eshavian and Kandan universities in the Northeast (it would persist at medical and law schools), and the amderen became standard. To maintain state accreditation, theses had to conform to a strict ideological rubric and were evaluated in large part for their application of socialist theory to the subject matter.
Language
Based on the belief that linguistic diversity was a hindrance to national and proletarian unity and that diglossia among multiple dialects and literary registers of Kiravic was a retrograde holdover from the country's hierarchical past, the Kirosocialist government vigorously promoted monolingualism among the Coscivian population, suppressing regional, local, and ethnic vernaculars and the levelling of Kiravic dialects. It also curtailed the use of High Coscivian in higher education and the publication of new books in the language, in addition to banishing High Coscivian formulae from state ceremonies and quietly scrapping High Coscivian mottoes of government agencies. In order to promote literacy in the sole national language among non-native speakers and purge Kiravian letters of perceived bourgeois and reactionary elements, the Union promoted the use of Standard Kiravic, a different written standard from traditional Literary Kiravic designed to be more regular, more "modern", and more accessible to the less educated and non-native speakers. Although these policies had only a limited effect on major regional languages like Southern Coscivian and West Coast Marine Coscivian, their impact on ethnic languages spoken in the cities was considerable. Even many urban centres in non-Kiravic-speaking areas, such as Bérasar and Saar-Silverda, became mainly Kiravic-speaking during this time.
The régime was more accommodating toward non-Coscivian minority languages and launched language development initiatives for Urom languages like Qódava. It also supported education and public services in the Pretannic language, as Welsh-Kiravians were ardent supporters of Kirosocialism and many high-ranking Party members, such as Secretary-General Rŵlan Jones, were native Welsh speakers. Gaelic education outside of Gaelic-majority areas was shut down and many Gaelic institutions of higher education were shut down or subjected to interference by the authorities, but the Kirosocialists quickly abandoned programmes to shift Gaelic-speaking areas to Kiravic as impractical.
Religion
The Kiravian Union's constitution declared it an explicitly dhiloryax ("not religious", "secular") state, whereas the republics that preceded and succeeded it were merely loryavôntix ("religiously-neutral"). Although most Kirosocialist Party cadre were irreligious, the Party lacked an ideological commitment to antitheism per se and never moved to prohibit religious practice outright, nor to ban any major religious group. Nonetheless, the Kiravian Union was aggressively anticlerical, based on the perception that traditional organised religions in Kiravia were an impediment to social and economic progress, reinforced parochial sectarian/communal group identities against national and class unity, and provided institutional safe havens for reactionary ideas and individuals. As such, the régime implemented policies to undermine, marginalise, repress, infiltrate, and coöpt organised religious bodies, as well as to suppress informal religious movements deemed threatening to the socialist system. This was accomplished through an array of different repressive measures including onerous tax and regulatory burdens on religious organisations and buildings, summary expropriations of property, harassment and arbitrary arrests of clergy, discrimination against active congregants in employment and rationing, censorship of religious speech and publications, and suppression of proselytism and outdoor religious assemblies such as processions. The intensity of this repression was uneven across religious groups, with the brunt of it levelled against the major apostolic Christian churches in Kiravia - the Coscivian Orthodox Church, the Insular Apostolic Church, and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was singled out for particularly strong persecution because as an oversized share of the pre-Kirosocialist urban social and economic élite were Catholic, leading it to be viewed as a bourgeois religion; and also because it was loyal to a foreign entity (the Pope and the Vatican) and adamantly opposed to revolutionary socialism.
The régime was less adversarial towards Protestants and certain Sectarian churches with less in the way of nationwide social influence and entrenched institutional privilege, especially those that were less hierarchical in form and could be more easily coöpted by the Party. Its policies toward the Coscivian monotheist religions were far less severe, and the authorities were generally tolerant of independent spirituality and "unorganised religion". Nonetheless, over the course of its existence the Kiravian Union did expressly proscribe over 40 distinct religious groups and movements, many of them with foreign associations.
Religious observance among Kiravians continued despite the government's opposition. Where congregations had been shut down or driven into bankruptcy, services often continued in house churches, in cemeteries and ossuaries, and in and outdoor settings, often under the cover of darkness. Among Coscivian Orthodox faithful, preëxisting moonlit Marian devotions took on renewed importance, and there was a resurgence of popular interest in the Coscivian religion of Sarostivism, which holds the Moon sacred and worships mainly at night. Religious publishing continued via peer-to-peer underground networks.
During the latter half of the Kiravian Union's existence, the Party began incorporating references to "spirituality" and "spiritual civilisation" into its propaganda, while simultaneously ramping up repression of the established churches and efforts to subordinate Kiravian religious life to Kirosocialist ideology.
Cuisine
Socialisation of systems of food production and distribution and the lifestyle changes experienced by urban Kiravians under the Kiravian Union had a major impact on how Kiravians cooked and ate.
Rations
A centrepiece of Kirosocialist welfare policy - and one that was initially quite popular - was the Soksyalnāstriluv or "Social Ration", more commonly known as the ɣaram ("parcel"), or a number of other dialectal and often colourful names. Designed to ensure food security for the urban proletariat and rural poor, the ɣaram was a weekly (later daily) package of basic staple foodstuffs allocated to eligible households, which encompassed most of the urban population. Families were free (and encouraged) to augment their diet with food from other sources, but as time went on the ration became the principal or sole source of food for many city-dwellers. By [YEAR], 90% of households in Xūrosar were ration-eligible and 68% were ration-dependent. The contents of the ɣaram varied considerably over time and later by location as nationwide distribution networks wore down and regional directorated were put in charge of procuring food and setting the "menu". However, they reliably included some form of potato (initially raw, later freeze-dried, milled, or flaked), some form of processed meat or fish (salt beef, kippers, tinned sausage), a grain product or flour, a vegetable/algal/fungal product, and canned beer. Before single-party rule, the rations were quite basic and uniform, but during the early years of the Kiravian Union they became more sophisticated and nutritionally balanced and the "menu" offerings began to rotate on a monthly or even weekly basis. During Mid-Kirosocialism, this variety devolved into unpredictable inconsistency as regional ration bureaux found it increasingly difficult to come up with supplies.
The introduction of individually-portioned rations was concurrent with the Mid-Kirosocialist economic downturn and the accompanying delays in the payment of cash wages to workers and shortages of consumer goods. This resulted in the adoption of ration packages as an ersatz currency, to the point where they began to take on an ascribed value of their own and could often be used for trade past their expiration date or even accepted as payment for real food.
Soup
The need to feed entire families on (often dried or otherwise preserved) foods scrapped together from disparate sources such as ration packs, bathtub gardens, and black markets restored the centrality of soup to the Kiravian diet. Soup had long been the usual main course for ordinary Kiravian households. However, in the decades leading up to Kirosocialism, Kiravians in coastal states had begun relegating soup to the status of an appetizer, lunch, or side dish, in emulation of Occidental habits. Under the Kiravian Union, "ration soups" prepared from whatever the day's ration happened to be, supplemented with homegrown or foraged greens, and who knows what else often yielded bizarre and surprising flavour combinations, some of which are still replicated today for those who have acquired a taste for them.
Legacy
The legacy and impact of the Kiravian Union is complex and controversial in Kiravian society.