Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov (1883-1946) composed the music, originally in 1938 for the Hymn of the Bolshevik Party. He described it as a combination of march form and Russian traditional music, particularly the bylina epic song tradition.
Sergey Mikhalkov (1913-2009) wrote the lyrics in collaboration with El-Registan (Gabriyel' Arkadyevich Ureklyan, 1899-1945). Mikhalkov also wrote both the 1977 revised lyrics and the new lyrics adopted in December 2000 for the Russian Federation's national anthem.
The anthem was first broadcast on Soviet radio at midnight on the 1st of January 1944 and was officially adopted on the 15th of March 1944. It had been published earlier, on the 7th of November 1943.
Following Stalin's death, de-Stalinization made the original lyrics unacceptable because they praised Stalin by name. From 1956 to 1977, the anthem was performed without any words. Revised lyrics by Mikhalkov, written in 1970 and omitting Stalin's name, were adopted in 1977 to mark the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution.
Yes. Ukraine banned public performance of the Soviet anthem under decommunization laws, with offenders since 2015 facing up to five years in prison, except in Russian-occupied areas. Latvia and Lithuania adopted similar laws.
After the Russian Federation's Patriotic Song anthem proved unpopular, the federal legislature approved the return of the Soviet melody in December 2000, shortly after Vladimir Putin first took office on the 7th of May 2000. New lyrics were written by Sergey Mikhalkov, the same author of the original 1944 Soviet lyrics.