He was born in the town of Lesozavodsk, which was in the Primorsky Krai Region of the RSFSR. He moved to Kazakhstan in 1969 where he studied mechanical engineering at the Kazakh National Agrarian University, where he graduated in 1973. After graduation, he was sent to work as chief engineer of the collective farm in Shymkent. In 1975, he was elected First Secretary of the Tulkubas District Komsomol Committee, where he worked for four years. In the 7 years since he left that post, he served as the head local party/executive positions in Shymkent. In the Spring of 1990, he worked as a deputy to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR. For about one and a half years after leaving that post, he was the First Secretary of the Shymkent Communist Party Central Committee. He served as Deputy President of the Kazakh SSR. In the remaining months of 1991, Tereshchenko assumed the post of Prime Minister of the Kazakh SSR. When the country gained independence on 16 December, he was appointed to the newly created post of Prime Minister. During his tenure, his government began work to privatize formerly state-run companies. He also proposed strengthening executive power in order to being about economic reforms in the country. In late May 1994, he suffered a defeat when the Parliament of Kazakhstan passed a vote of no confidence in the Tereshchenko Government. He held out for a couple of months until he was dismissed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev on 12 October following a corruption scandal by his Minister of Internal Affairs that month. Akezhan Kazhegeldin was chosen to be Tereshchenko's successor, which followed his retirement from public service. Since his dismissal, he has served as the President of the International Foundation "Integration", whose main goal of the foundation is the start of a geointegration process of Kazakhstan into the economic, political and cultural space of the modern world. In 1998, he was among those supporting the re-election of Nursultan Nazarbayev as President.
Private life
Tereshchenko is an ethnic Russian and was one of the first from his ethnicity to take office in independent Kazakhstan. His wife, Yevgenia Grigorievna, is a Russian language teacher of literature. Together they have two daughters, Nina and Elena.
