He was executed after the "reincarnational test" which revealed that he had been a Nazi officer in his previous life. Colonel Urchagin Blind and paralyzed graduate of the military political academy named after Pavel Korchagin, the protagonist of the novel How the Steel was Tempered (his injury is the reference to the author of the novel Nikolai Ostrovsky, who also became blind and paralyzed due to his illness), he is the idealistic leader of the Soviet space program. He tells Omon that “just one pure soul is enough for the banner of triumphant socialism to be unfurled on the surface of the distant moon.”[5]