Boris Nikolayevich Ponomarev (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Пономарёв; 17 January 1905 – 21 December 1995) was a Soviet politician, ideologist, historian and member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His patron in his rise to the Politburo was Mikhail Suslov.

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Quick Facts Head of the International Department of the Central Committee, Preceded by ...

Boris Ponomarev
Борис Пономарёв
Ponomarev in 1963
Head of the International Department of the Central Committee
In office 21 February 1957 – 25 February 1986
Preceded by	Post established (himself as Department for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties head)
Succeeded by	Anatoly Dobrynin
Head of the Department for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties of the Central Committee
In office 9 December 1955 – 21 February 1957
Preceded by	Mikhail Suslov
Succeeded by	Post abolished (himself as International Department head and Yuri Andropov as Department for Relations with the Communist and Workers' Parties of the Socialist Countries head)
Candidate member of the 24th, 25th, 26th Politburo
In office 19 May 1972 – 25 February 1986
Member of the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th Secretariat
In office 31 October 1961 – 25 February 1985
Personal details
Born	(1905-01-17)17 January 1905 Zaraysk, Ryazan Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	21 December 1995(1995-12-21) (aged 90) Moscow, Russia
Citizenship	Soviet
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1919–1991)
Residence	Kutuzovsky Prospekt
Profession	Politician, historian

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His name would more accurately be transliterated as "Ponomaryov," though the form "Ponomarev" has become more frequent.

From 1955 to 1986, Ponomarev was chief of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee. He occupied an office within Central Committee headquarters until the 1991 August coup, which he is said to have supported.

In 1962, Ponomarev wrote an updated state history of the CPSU to replace Stalin's 1938 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) as part of the Khrushchev Thaw.^[1]

His December 1962 speech at the All-Union Conference of Historians was a major turning point in the development of Soviet historiography.^[2]

• Plot against the Soviet Union and world peace (1938)
• Soviet Foreign Policy Vol. 1 1917 - 1945, edited with Anatoly Gromyko, Progress Publishers, 1980
• History of Soviet Foreign Policy 1945-1970, edited with Anatoly Gromyko, Progress Publishers, 1974