Gabriel El-Registan

Gabriel Arkadyevich Ureklyan ( _ru. Габриэль Аркадьевич Уреклян) (15 December 1899 - 30 June 1945), better known as G. El-Registan (Г. Эль-Регистан), was an Armenian Soviet poet. He was born into an Armenian banker's family in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Arshaluys (Russified to Arkadi) Ureklyan, fled to Tiflis from the Ottoman-ruled Armenia in 1890's, and subsequently moved to Samarkand. He took the Bolshevik side during the Russian Civil War and the subsequent Soviet takeover of Central Asia. Embarking on a career as a reporter and writer, he adopted the nickname El-Registan after Samarkand's most famous landmark. He worked in several prominent Central Asian newspapers, including "Pravda Vostoka" in Tashkent. He achieved prominence as a talented reporter and was invited to move to Moscow to work for the "Izvestia". From there, he covered the massive Soviet construction and heavy industry-building campaigns and became a prominent propagandist, such as Belomorkanal (White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal), Uralmash, etc. He also wrote movie scripts and radio plays, and El-Registan is perhaps better known for his script of the Soviet movie Djulbars (1935). [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1246051/ IMDB]

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, El-Registan became a special war correspondent, frequently traveling to frontlines. He attracted the attention of Joseph Stalin, and when he submitted his draft of the new Soviet anthem, written in collaboration with Sergey Mikhalkov, Stalin personally chose the draft and instructed the authors on the changes to be made. Eventually, it was adopted as the national anthem of the Soviet Union "Gimn sovetskovo soyuza" in 1944 (translated into English as the "Hymn of the Soviet Union").

He was married to Valentina Galanina, an actress in Moscow. El-Registan died in Moscow and is buried in the Novodevichye Cemetery.