Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynsky, (year of birth unknown — died 8 January 1627), prince, boyar, eldest son of Mikhail Vorotynsky, a prominent political figure of the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century.
He took part in suppressing the uprising of the Kazan Tatars and Cheremis (Mari) in 1583, and was voivode (military governor) in Nizhny Novgorod in 1586–87.
During the struggle for power under Tsar Feodor Ioannovich, he was among the opponents of Boris Godunov, as a result of which he fell into disgrace and was exiled. He was released only seven years later. He was pardoned, granted the rank of boyar, and sent to Kazan as first voivode, where he remained from 1592 to 1596.
From the spring of 1605 he held the rank of boyar.
After the overthrow of Boris Godunov, according to the testimony of foreigners (Stralenberg and Wagner), Prince I. M. Vorotynsky assisted in placing Vasily Shuisky on the throne. Serving him, he fought against the "Tushino" faction and defeated the army of False Dmitry II near Yelets.
In 1606–1607 he actively participated in suppressing the uprising of I. I. Bolotnikov.
In 1608 he was defeated near Tula by the leader of the rebels, Telyatevsky, and fled to Aleksin.
In 1610 Vasily Shuisky gathered a militia to fight False Dmitry II; Crimean princes and a number of other princes, including Ivan Mikhailovich, joined this militia. The pretender defeated the militia, plundered a nearby monastery, slaughtered its inhabitants and looted everything. I. M. Vorotynsky barely escaped by fleeing to Moscow.
On 17 June 1610, Ivan Mikhailovich, despite his personal attachment to the tsar, announced his deposition to him on behalf of the Duma and moved him, together with all his property, to a boyar estate belonging to Vasily Shuisky.
He became a member of the "Seven Boyars" (Semiboyarshchina). The Duma began negotiations with the Polish king Sigismund about placing Sigismund's son, Prince Władysław, on the Russian throne. However, I. M. Vorotynsky, in full agreement with Patriarch Hermogenes, stood for the complete clearing of Moscow of the Poles and against placing Władysław on the throne.
In October 1610 Ivan Mikhailovich was accused of betrayal and treason, arrested on suspicion of involvement in an anti-Polish conspiracy, and was released only in 1612.
He was a participant in the Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land) of 1612–1613. As a descendant of the Rurikids, he was offered the Russian throne, but he declined. Ivan Mikhailovich supported the candidacy of Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov and was among the envoys sent by the Zemsky Sobor to the newly elected tsar with a request to hasten his arrival in Moscow. At Novobratovshchina, I. M. Vorotynsky greeted Mikhail Fyodorovich before his ceremonial entry into the capital.
In 1616 Ivan Mikhailovich headed an embassy to Poland for peace negotiations. The envoys met six or seven times, but the negotiations failed owing to the fierce resistance of the Poles and Lithuanians, who by every means sought the election of the Polish prince Władysław to the Russian throne.
The tsar appointed I. M. Vorotynsky first voivode in Kazan. From 1617 he served as the namestnik (viceroy) of Kazan.
The prince enjoyed the unlimited trust of Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, and when the latter went on pilgrimage to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, he left Ivan Mikhailovich in Moscow as first voivode.
Judging by the cadastral survey (pistsovaya kniga) of the Zakudemsky stan compiled by Dmitry Vasilyevich Lodygin, Vasily Ivanovich Poltev, and clerk Dementy Obraztsov in 1621–1623, Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynsky can be considered the founder of Vorotynets. The source contains the first documented mention of Vorotynets (disambiguation): "The village of Vorotynesk on the spring and on the Molvyazh river was newly settled in the forest. And in the village there is a wooden tent-roofed church of the Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, with a side-chapel of Alexis the Man of God, and a side-chapel of Prince Michael of Chernigov and his boyar Theodore. And in the church the icons and candles and vestments and church vessels and books, and on the bell tower the bells, were built by the patrimonial lord, boyar Prince Ivan Mikhailovich."
That Ivan Mikhailovich is the founder of Vorotynets is also attested by the side-chapels of the Vorotynets church, whose altars are consecrated in honor of the patron saints of his father Mikhail Vorotynsky and his son Alexei Ivanovich Vorotynsky.
At the end of his life, Prince I. M. Vorotynsky took monastic vows and accepted the schema under the name Iona; he died on 8 January 1627.