This is the most scandalous book about Dubna. It was written in the West and first published in Munich by the Posev publishing house in Russian.

This book was written by a man whom people in Dubna try not to remember. He lived in the era of the triumph of nuclear physics. The fact that he was involved in nuclear physics made him a happy person. The fact that he came into conflict with Flerov, and then with the authorities, ultimately led him to the West.

The title of the book was chosen very accurately. Polikanov really “teared” himself away from the USSR. He was given a choice: fatherland or freedom. It's easy to say “I choose freedom” when you don't have to leave your home. For Polikanov, the USSR truly was his stepfather's home. He grew up here. He got used to this life. He did not want to leave “for good.”

The book is written in the genre of confession - a genre that, starting with St. Augustine’s “Confession,” is fifteen hundred years old. Polikanov arranges the events of his life and his own actions in such a way that one gets the impression that the breakup was inevitable. And it could have happened earlier. For example, in 1970, when his assignment in Denmark expired. For a year and a half he did not miss his homeland. There was no reason for this. The homeland is the home where you are welcome. And they weren’t waiting for him at home. And there was no rush to return.

But he returned. Relations with Flerov became painful. The problem was resolved by moving to another laboratory and choosing a new direction of research. Then he was persistently offered other institutes. Bogolyubov advised: “Go to Kyiv.” Another option was the Institute of Medium Energy, which was built in the mid-seventies in Pakhra (Troitsk). But Kyiv seemed like a remote province to Polikanov, and the Trinity option disappeared after a chain of irreversible events, which began with the refusal of officials from the State Atomic Energy Committee to let him go on another business trip abroad with his family. The deep drilling authorities had concerns about him. They considered him a potential defector. Everything that follows may seem like a collection of accidents and absurdities if you do not know the character of the person to whom this happened. Polikanov did not tolerate uncertainty. He chose to escalate the situation to the limit. And he abandoned the trip completely.

The logic of events led him to the dissidents. When a person is over forty, and even more so over fifty, his desire to understand what life is and what the world in which he lives is natural and inevitable. At that time, Polikanov turned fifty. Through V.I. Petrukhin he met the writer Voinovich. Gained access to banned samizdat literature, which dispelled his last illusions. This is how he met the members of the Helsinki group. And this acquaintance helped him understand another important thing: this state can be fought.