  We investigate the transition between spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking
and conformal behavior in the SU(3) theory with multiple fermion flavors. We
propose a new strategy for studying this transition. Instead of changing the
number of flavors, we lift the mass of a subset of the fermions, keeping the
rest of the fermions near to the massless chiral limit in order to probe the
transition.
  Dedicated to the 60th birthday of Academician Valery Rubakov.
