Gabriel El-Registan

Gabriel Arkadyevich Ureklyan (; ; 15 December 1899 – 30 June 1945), better known as El-Registan (), was a Soviet Armenian poet best known for having co-written the lyrics to the State Anthem of the Soviet Union along with Sergey Mikhalkov.

==Biography== He was born into an Armenian banker's family in Samarkand, in the Samarkand Oblast of the Russian Empire (present-day Uzbekistan). His father, Arshak (Russified to Arkadi) Ureklyan, fled to Tiflis from Ottoman-ruled Armenia in 1890s due to the Hamidian massacres, 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, which was composed of a part of his first name and the Samarkand's most famous landmark, Registan. 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, covering topics such as the White Sea–Baltic Canal and Uralmash. He also wrote movie scripts and radio plays, and El-Registan is perhaps better known for his script of the Soviet film Djulbars (1935). The composer Asya Sultanova set some of his work to music.