Panteleimon Ponomarenko

In 1918 he was drafted into the Red Army, while according to other sources - he volunteered.

He fought in the Russian Civil War and took part in the defense of Yekaterinodar from units of the White Army.

From 1919 he worked in the North Caucasus at the oil fields, and then in the railway transport.

From 1922 to 1926, he worked with the Komsomol in Kuban.

He became a member of the Communist party in 1925 and in the same year he was approved as the head of the agitprop department at a district party committee in the Azov-Black Sea region.

In 1927 he graduated from the Krasnodar Rabfak and in the same year entered the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers.

Since 1930 he has been an inspector for the acceptance of steam locomotives at the Michurinsky steam locomotive repair plant in Tambov.

From 1931 to 1932, he continued his studies and in 1932, he graduated from the Moscow Electromechanical Institute of Railway Engineers, which was formed from MIIT in 1931.

After graduation, he served as assistant to the director of the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers.

From 1932 to 1937, he served in the Red Army as battalion commander in the Belarusian Military District, in the Separate Red Banner Far Eastern Army, at the Moscow Military District.

In 1936, he was appointed as an engineer at the Design Bureau of the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute, secretary of the party committee of the institute.

On 1938, he served the apparatus of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

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.

Ponomarenko devoted his first speech, which took place on 8 July 1938 in Gomel, to the task of 'rooting out enemies'.

His cipher was also known to Stalin with a request to increase for the number of repressed in the first category (execution) by two thousand people, and in the second (prison or camp), by three thousand.

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.

Following the Invasion of Poland in 1939, Ponomarenko served as the member of the Military Council of the Belarusian Special Military District and took part in the leadership of the troops that entered the territory of Western Belarus.

During this time he also assisted the National Jazz Orchestra in Minsk, inviting Eddie Rosner to lead it.

Following the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, he became the member of the Military Council of the Western Front.

From July to May 1942, he served as the member of the Military Councils of Central Front, Bryansk Front and 3rd Shock Army of the Kalinin Front.

During World War II, he was one of the leaders of the Communist partisan units within Nazi-occupied Belarus.

From May 1942 to March 1943, Ponomarenko served the Chief of Staff of the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement at the Headquarters of the Supreme Command.

He was granted the rank of Lieutenant general in March 1943.

According to his information, the partisan units under his control in Belarus eliminated around 300,000 German soldiers, including 30 generals, 6,336 officers and 1,520 air force pilots, within two years of fighting.

At the same time, 3,000 trains were derailed, 3,263 railway and road bridges, 1,191 tanks and armored vehicles, 618 command vehicles, 4,027 trucks, 476 aircraft, 378 heavy handguns, 895 ammunition and other storage facilities were destroyed.

The concept of destroying the railway network by 90,000 partisans on 200,000 to 300,000 track sections was developed by Ponomarenko, who was familiar with the railways.

He argued to Stalin that this destruction would severely restrict the freedom of movement of German troops.

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.

At the Plenum of the Central Committee on 27–28 February 1943, speaking of the goals of the Soviet partisans in Belarus, Ponomarenko stated that "the fight against the hostile Polish underground is inevitable".

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.

On 22 June 1943, on his behalf, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus took the plenum in Moscow resolution on the undertakings to further develop the partisan movement in the western oblasts of Belarus, stating that

"The western oblasts of Soviet Belarus are an integral part of the Republic of Belarus. The nationalist divisions and groups formed by Polish reactionary circles should be isolated from the population by creating Soviet troops and groups consisting of working people of Polish nationality. Nationalist units and groups should be fought by all means.'"

From 1944 to 1948 he was a member of the Council of People's Commissars in the Belarusian SSR, which he chaired.

In 1946, the Soviet authorities ordered the central control of economic and financial activity of the Communist Party of Byelorussia.

In the Central Committee of the CPSU he worked as a secretary from 1948 to 1950, while at the same time he was a candidate for the Politburo of the CPSU from 1948 to 1952.

Panteleimon Kondratyevich Ponomarenko (Пантелеймо́н Кондра́тьевич Пономаре́нко, ; Пантелеймо́н Кіндрáтович Пономарéнко; – 18 January 1984) was a Soviet statesman and politician and one of the leaders of Soviet partisan resistance in Belarus.

He served as an administrator at various positions within the Soviet government, including the leadership positions in Byelorussian and Kazakh SSRs.

Ponomarenko was born in khutor Shelkovskiy in Kuban oblast to an ethnic Ukrainian peasant family coming from Kharkov governorate.

Already at the age of twelve he entered as an apprentice in a workshop, then retrained as a blacksmith.