President Boris Yeltsin fired the self-styled "fascist" in his government, the press chief Boris Mironov on Friday after he had aroused the wrath of the Russian press with a string of provocative remarks.


Mironov had declared on a recent tour of the Russian provinces that "if Russian nationalism is fascism then I am a fascist." He went on to call himself "a strong nationalist" and said: "It is a healthy feeling, it is our people's roots, history and wisdom."


Yeltsin's press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, said on NTV television that the president had been besieged with requests for Mironov's removal after his statements.


"The Russian public demanded that this man should quit Russian politics," Kostikov said. "I'm very glad to say by way of comment that we live in a society where the president and government listen to the public. I must say this is to the credit of a democratic society and democratic press."


Kostikov said that no decision had yet been taken about Mironov's successor.


Mironov appears to have been swept away by a wave of outrage from the Moscow press and liberal supporters of Yeltsin.


Six prominent liberal politicians, including Yeltsin's human rights adviser Sergei Kovalyov, wrote a letter of protest to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, asking him if his government now espoused fascism after the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti dubbed Mironov the "fascist minister in Chernomyrdin's government." The flamboyant daily Moskovsky Komsomolets called the press chief "Doctor Goebbels" after Hitler's propaganda minister.


In his controversial tour, Mironov also raised a storm by advocating tough state control of the press and saying local newspaper editors should be appointed by local authorities.


Quoting Lenin, he said that the press should be an "agitator, propagandist and organizer" firmly under the control of the state. He said that the press should be managed "more rigorously than the army."


Dmitry Ostalsky, the editor of the liberal daily Segodnya, one of the newspapers that campaigned against Mironov, said he was pleased by the news of his dismissal Friday. He said he had heard rumors of Mironov's impending demise but had been surprised by the speed with which it was carried out.


"We will have to see who is appointed in his place, but it is a victory up to a point," he said. "In any case his successor will have to be much more careful."


Mironov was made head of the newly formed state Press Committee last December when the Information Ministry was disbanded. His job is not cabinet level but carries responsibility for press and publishing.


Mironov, a former correspondent for the Soviet Communist Party daily Pravda, was a prot?g? of the former information minister and Yeltsin adviser, Mikhail Poltoranin.


Poltoranin, who also favors tough control of the press, is now head of the parliamentary Media Committee but still has an office in the Press Committee building. The editor of Moskovskiye Novosti, Viktor Loshak, called the departing minister a "political puppet" in the hands of Poltoranin in Friday's edition of the newspaper Obshchaya Gazeta.