Portrait of Mikhail Ivanovich Terestjenko

Alexander Golovin was an artist, set designer and furniture designer. The man at the portrait has an unusually exciting story. Mikhail Ivanovich Tereshchenko was a Russian politician, financier and sugar manufacturer. He was the Russian Finance Minister and Foreign Minister during the Revolutionary year 1917. After the Bolshevik October Revolution, he was arrested in the Winter Palace, along with several other ministers, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. When the Bolshevik October Revolution happend in 1917, was he arrested in the Winter Palace, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. After his release, March 2, 1918, Tereshchenko fled with his family from Petrograd without passports to the Murman coast and then with a Lapp caravan to Petsamo. Finally the family ended up in Sweden and Norway. Tereshchenko later settled in southern France and from there he continued his struggle against the Bolshevik regime by supporting the White Army. Together with the Prince of Monaco, he owned a sugar plantation on Madagascar. When he died 70 years old it said in the Times obituary "Circumstances which might have crushed a weaker man were used by him as a means of triumph".