SOCIAL-HISTORY AND HISTORICAL EVENTS - FO R A NEW APPROACH

By radically altering the conditions of life in Russia, the whole of E astern Europe, and Germany, the so-called ''Wende'' of 1989-that is, t he fall of communism-reminded us that historical events can sometimes give rise to vast structural changes. At the same time it refuted some of the very basic theoretical and methodological assumptions of socia l history. In fact, social historians had for a long time adopted a re ductionist view of historical events. In sharp contrast to nineteenth and early twentieth century historians, they had argued that historica l events were virtually predetermined by existing structural condition s and thus were neither autonomous nor capable of bringing about struc tural change. Being considered no more than ''surface phenomena'' (Fer nand Braudel), historical events had lost, as far as social history wa s concerned their status as privileged objects of historical analysis. How then, taking this recent experience of 1989 into account, do even ts come about? What constitutes their autonomy and their power to chan ge structures? How should rite story of an event be written, after all ? For the reasons just outlined social historians have not yet come up with very convincing answers. One wonders therefore whether we all ou ght -as same ''revisionist'' historians already have- to return to the former methods and answers of historicism. This article strictly reje cts such an option. Instead, it attempts to develop, theoretical and m ethodological alternatives which better suit social historians.