The paper describes the main ideas of the almanac “Kazus”, the situation in historiography that brought about its appearance, and the specific features of the ‘case approach’ the published papers are based upon. Without diminishing the role of mass regulations in determining people’s behaviour in different historical periods, we are trying to comprehend in what way – in different circumstances – mental stereotypes and individual experience interacted, and in what way that interaction influenced the free will of the acteurs. The present paper analyzes the relation of the ‘case approach’ to the Italian microhistory, the German Alltags geschichte, and the historiographical trend of “Les Annales” of the 1990s.