Dmitry Dobrodeev, an orientalist and translator, a finalist for the Russian Booker Prize, in the late 80s, by chance, fell into the gap formed in the place of the GDR, and emerged from it already in comfortable Munich - a journalist for the Russian News Service of Radio Liberty. In his autobiographical novel “The Great Freedom of Ivan D.” he describes the tragicomic vicissitudes of this “time of miracles,” when thousands of Soviet people suddenly abandoned work, home, even families and embarked on a dangerous flight - across poorly guarded borders to the West, to a new life. His lyrical hero, the Soviet Schweik, pursued by the KGB and German intelligence, longing for the Motherland and an eternal hangover, reveals to us the world of dissidents, emigrants, escaped “prisoners of the regime” without the tired aspiration and idolatry - the way it really was.