Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev (Russian: Никола́й Семёнович Пато́личев; 23 September 1908 – 1 December 1989) was a Soviet statesman who served as Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1958 to 1985.

In February 1941, at the 18th All-Union Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Patolichev was promoted to full membership on the Central Committee.

[7] In February 1946 Patolichev was recalled to Moscow to head the Organization and Instruction Department of the Central Committee, and was elected to the Orgburo on 18 March 1946.

In the late Stalin years it was not unusual to appoint ethnic Russians to leading posts in the non-Russian republics; Patolichev's task was to raise local agricultural production."

At Lavrenty Beria's instigation, in June 1953 the Presidium attempted to remove Patolichev as first secretary in Byelorussia and replace him with an ethnic Belarusian, Mikhail Zimyanin.

At the contentious plenum of the Byelorussian Central Committee that followed, the delegates rallied behind Patolichev and rejected the Presidium's decree, which was later dropped.

"Patolichev managed to fend off Beria's attempt to remove him, but at the January 1955 Central Committee plenum in Moscow he clashed with Khrushchev over agricultural policy.

[13] He was later replaced as first secretary in Byelorussia by ethnic Belarusian Kirill Mazurov, and in July 1956 became first deputy minister of Foreign Affairs.

[16] Though he had a seat on the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Patolichev never returned to the Politburo and thus his influence was less than that of his contemporaries Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov.