"Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours."

January Uprising by ~Janemin

“The January Uprising (Polish: powstanie styczniowe, Lithuanian: 1863 m. sukilimas, Belarusian: Паўстанне 1863-1864 гадоў) was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, parts of Ukraine, western Russia) against the Russian Empire. It began on 22 January 1863 and lasted until the last insurgents were captured in 1865.

The uprising began as a spontaneous protest by young Poles against conscription into the Imperial Russian Army, and was soon joined by high-ranking Polish-Lithuanian officers and various politicians. The insurrectionists, severely outnumbered and lacking serious outside support, were forced to resort to guerrilla warfare tactics. They failed to win any major military victories or capture any major cities or fortresses, but they did blunt the effect of the Tsar’s abolition of serfdom in the Russian partition, which had been designed to draw the support of peasants away from the nation. Severe reprisals against insurgents, such as public executions and deportations to Siberia, led many people to abandon armed struggle and turn instead to the idea of “organic work”: economic and cultural self-improvement.” (Wikipedia)

“Just how widespread the truce was is hard to say. It was certainly not general—there are plenty of accounts of fighting continuing through the Christmas season in some sectors, and others of men fraternizing to the sound of guns firing nearby. One common factor seems to have been that Saxon troops—universally regarded as easygoing—were the most likely to be involved, and to have made the first approaches to their British counterparts. “We are Saxons, you are Anglo-Saxons,” one shouted across no man’s land. “What is there for us to fight about?” The most detailed estimate, made by Malcolm Brown of Britain’s Imperial War Museums, is that the truce extended along at least two-thirds of British-held trench line that scarred southern Belgium.”

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The Human Touch: Hetalia Bridges the Gap
by Bad

What I’ve found is that sometimes it’s hard for people to get excited about history. Many feel like history is an impersonal subject and that countries are just lines on a map. And that’s because many people can’t connect with history because history lacks a personal touch—a human touch.

For a government class, I have to do a reading on The History of the Peloponnesian War. I don’t want to read that. It’s not a long reading, but it’s more than two pages, so it gets a big “nope” from me.

And as I was looking through this textbook, I found myself wishing there were Hetalia characters that directly represented Sparta and Athens, so that maybe I would actually enjoy the reading a little bit.

See, Hetalia creates that “human touch” that history usually lacks. Hetalia gives a human face and human emotions and human ambitions to a country that before was simply a geographical location. Hetalia bridges the gap between historical events and what it means to be a person with feelings and desires.

Civil Wars are no longer just battles that tear a country part from inside, they are battles that tear a person apart from inside—battles that manifest in the inward struggle and conflict of a human being (the personification). And we, as other human beings, can relate to that.

It is one thing to read about the American Revolution in a history class. But it’s another thing to watch the Hetalia episode and physically see the pain on England’s face and have it hit you that this is hurting him. Your heart stops then aches when you think about how Russia—no, Ivan Braginsky—was left defeated and alone after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These images cause fans to suffer and feel in ways they probably would never have if they had merely read a historical summery out of a textbook.

Hetalia was never a way to gloss over war or sugar coat history. Hetalia was a way to make you want to rip out your heart for things you didn’t give much thought before, to make you laugh and cry and feel sincere, profound emotions about historical events that barely mattered to you before.

Hetalia has always been, and will always be, a way to make history move you.

The problem with this post is that you have put first a fictional character before real people’s suffering.

Russia’s suffering is the suffering of a soldier, of a mother, of a father, of a son. If that isn’t human enough, I don’t know what to tell you.

I get what you’re saying, that history can be just a series of dates and names and battles. Maybe that’s just how history is conventionally taught. But this isn’t a problem of history itself. Because if you want human suffering, if you want something personal, history is the subject. Apart from literature, history is the subject of humans and about humans. This is a problem with how history is usually taught, not with the subject itself. I agree, it requires a more human touch. But it need not create a fictional persona when there are millions of people, real people, who were there, who met kings, who had mud up to their knees in trenches, who died to relate to.

“Hetalia was never a way to gloss over war or sugar coat history.” But you are, when you elevate a singular person’s experience over the experiences of millions. You are when you choose one face, one skin to embody a people who come from infinitely unique backgrounds. I agree, Hetalia is not meant to be treated as a serious vehicle of history. It can be a wonderful tool to help learn it. But it should never take history’s place or be superior to history.

All I am saying is that, if you want something real, something profound, something that will cleave your heart two, I guarantee you someone sometime was there, saw that, and wrote it down. I guarantee you there were loyalist parents and revolutionary children who were apt metaphors for the American Revolution. I guarantee you there were people’s whose stories could move to your knees, who would glorify the will and character of humanity.

Better yet, they are real.

Our podcast ‘History vs. Fandom’ is going to launch really soon, we promise! We’ll have more information about that when we get closer to finalizing the first recording.
Where the Hell is Hetalia? will officially kick off in February. Be on the lookout for important information regarding this event!
We’ll be throwing a synchtube party two weeks from tomorrow on Friday, February 1st. Come join us for a night of watching great Hetalia videos and, of course, goofing off.
If you have any suggestions for an event we could go around/for Valentine’s Day, let us know. We’re always open to fun ideas.