| Mikhail Poltoranin | |
| Office: | Deputy Prime Minister of Russia |
| Term Start: | 22 February |
| Term End: | 25 November 1992 |
| President: | Boris Yeltsin |
| Primeminister: | Boris Yeltsin Yegor Gaidar (acting) |
| Office2: | Minister of Press and Mass Media |
| President2: | Boris Yeltsin |
| Primeminister2: | Ivan Silayev Oleg Lobov (acting) Boris Yeltsin Yegor Gaidar (acting) |
| Predecessor2: | Ivan Vorozheikin |
| Successor2: | Mikhail Fedotov |
| Term Start2: | 14 July 1990 |
| Term End2: | 25 November 1992 |
| Birth Date: | 22 November 1939 |
| Birth Place: | Leninogorsk, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union |
| Nationality: | Russian |
| Profession: | Journalist, television presenter |
| Native Name Lang: | ru |
Mikhail Nikiforovich Poltoranin (Russian: Михаил Никифорович Полторанин; born 22 November 1939) is a Russian journalist and politician who held senior government posts under the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. Most notably, Poltoranin served as the minister of information and later as the deputy prime minister for the sphere of the press and news.
During the Soviet era he worked with the Communist Party daily Moskovskaya Pravda.[1]
In early 1992, as part of the new government formed by Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Poltoranin was among the several Deputy Prime Ministers. His role was to oversee the ministries regarding the press and cultural sphere.[2] In April of that year, Vice President of Russia Alexander Rutskoy accused Yeltsin and his allies in various acts of corruption, including Poltoranin, who was accused of illegally selling off Russian property in Berlin.[3]
On August 3–8, 1992, Poltoranin visited Japan where he discussed the Kuril Islands dispute with Japanese officials, and proposed to get the United States involved in the question.[4] The goal of this was to make sure that Russia's security interests in the region were addressed.[5]
Poltoranin ended up being sacked on 25 November 1992 from both his post as Minister of Information and Deputy Chairman of Government of the Russian Federation. This was largely viewed as a move to placate the conservative opposition by President Yeltsin, who wanted to win their support in the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia for his economic plan. Poltoranin understood this and accepted the status of being a political sacrifice.[6]
After stepping down from the government, Poltoranin published a book titled The lonely tsar in the Kremlin: Yeltsin and his team during the late 1990s.[7]
Poltoranin expresses vehemently anti-Vainakh sentiments in his writings. In Chapter 5 of his book "Powerful as TNT. The Legacy of Tsar Boris" (Russian: Власть в тротиловом эквиваленте. Наследие царя Бориса) he describes allowing exiled Chechens to return to Chechnya as "Chechenization of Russia", uses the phrase "acting Vainakh" as an insult, and compares Vainakh lands to sewage pits to support his reason for wanting to have a Chechen-Ingush Republic in East Kazakhstan instead of inside the North Caucasus of Russia.[8] [9]