Panteleimon Ponomarenko


Panteleimon Kondratyevich Ponomarenko was one of the leaders of Soviet partisan resistance in Belarus. He also served as an administrator at various positions within the Soviet government, including the leadership positions in Byelorussian and Kazakh SSRs.

Early life

Ponomarenko was born in khutor Shelkovskiy in Kuban oblast to an ethnic Ukrainian peasant family coming from Kharkov governorate. He fought in the Russian civil war and became a member of the Communist party in 1925.

Career

As the head of Belarus

From 1938 to 1947, Ponomarenko was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and from 1944 to 1948, also the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Belarus. During the Great Purge he successfully defended Belarusian-language poets Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas from repressions, personally travelling to Stalin to appeal for their protection. The two poets were later awarded the Order of Lenin.
During this time he also assisted the National Jazz Orchestra in Minsk, inviting Eddie Rosner to lead it.

During World War II

During World War II, he was one of the leaders of the Communist partisan units within Nazi-occupied Belarus. He was granted the rank of Lieutenant general in March 1943.
According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, during that time he also clashed with the Polish underground and gave orders for his troops to disarm them and execute their officers. In this aspect, the institute claims, the forces under Ponomarenko's command initiated a limited collaboration with the Nazi occupation forces informing on members of the Polish underground.

After the war

From 16 October 1952 until 6 March 1953, Ponomarenko was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was made First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR in 1954 before becoming the Soviet ambassador to Poland between 1955 and 1957.
From 26 October 1957 to 22 April 1959 Ponomarenko was the Soviet ambassador to India and Nepal, and from 30 June 1959 to 21 June 1962 to the Netherlands.
In his later years, Ponomarenko was a professor at the between 1964 and 1974.

In popular culture

In the video game Hearts of Iron IV by Paradox Interactive, Panteleimon Ponomarenko became a meme due to his name being the generic name of a communist leader in one of the numerous mods for the game. The generic leader portrait is wrongly believed to be based on him, even though it in fact depicts John Adams, 1st Baron Adams.