Microhistory aims to interpret human behavior in circumstances dictated by power. Her goal is to see in him an actor capable of influencing the course of events and aware of his involvement in them. Thus, this direction of historical science is opposed to the intellectual tradition, in which the individual is understood as part of a certain “popular mass”, as a passive object, and not a subject of the historical process. The almanac "Casus", founded in 1996 by the brilliant medievalist historian Yuri Lvovich Bessmertny and which aroused great interest in the scientific community, was the first and for a long time remained the only platform for the development of microhistory in Russia. The first part of this anthology introduces the reader to texts on theory that gave impetus to the “casual” direction in modern Russian historiography, and the second part introduces the studies published in the first five issues of the almanac. These works help to trace how the methodological principles formulated by Yu. L. Bessmertny and other authors of “Casus” are applied and developed. The book will mark the beginning of a new project of the UFO publishing house, dedicated to microhistorical research.