Galina Melnikova

Galina Vitalyevna Melnikova was born in Tashkent on 23 December 1936. In 1961 she graduated from the Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages.

She began her television career on 26 December 1956, when, aged twenty, she went on air live for the first time at the republican television and radio company. She spent more than fifty years on the company’s staff and is recognised as an announcer of the highest category.

For many years she presented the news programme “Axborot” (today “Uzbekistan 24”), as well as festive and ceremonial broadcasts, reports and government concerts. In the years of independence she read the President’s holiday greetings and official addresses to viewers.

She also represented Uzbek art in Moscow, hosting concerts of Uzbek performers at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses and in Star City. Although she was repeatedly invited to work on Moscow television, she stayed in Tashkent. On air she interviewed Maya Plisetskaya, Edita Piekha, Galina Vishnevskaya and other well-known performers.

Since 1990 she has been on the board of trustees of the charitable foundation “Mehrjon” and organises children’s creative marathons for pupils of orphanages and boarding schools. For her charity work she received the medal of the Order of St Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra, the Wonderworker, presented by the Metropolitan of Tashkent and Central Asia.

In 1975 she was named Honoured Artist of the Uzbek SSR. She later received the Honorary Diploma of the Republic of Uzbekistan (1993), the Order “Do'stlik” (1998), the Order “Fidokorona xizmatlari uchun”, Russia’s Pushkin Medal and the national “Oltin qalam” prize. On 23 December 2016, her eightieth birthday, a presidential decree conferred on her the title People’s Artist of Uzbekistan. In 2017 the President of Russia awarded her the Order of Friendship.

In 2020 the art critic Inessa Gulzarova published a book about her life, “Galina Melnikova. A Living Symbol of an Era”; it was presented at the Alisher Navoi National Library of Uzbekistan.