Potemkin village

Conventional wisdom has it that Potemkin villages were fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. Purportedly, Potemkin, who led the Crimean military campaign, had the hollow facades constructed along the desolate banks of the Dnieper river in order to impress the monarch and her travel party with the value of her new conquests, thus, enhancing his standing in the empress's eyes. Some modern historians, however, consider this scenario of self-serving deception to be, at best, an exaggeration. Potemkin did mount efforts to develop the Crimea and probably directed peasants to spruce up the riverfront in advance of the empress' boat party. But the tale of elaborate, fake settlements, the glowing fires of which were designed to comfort the monarch and her entourage as they surveyed the barren territory at night, is regarded in some quarters as largely fiction. "Potemkin village" has come to mean, esp. in a political context, any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation.

External link

• The Straight Dope: Did "Potemkin villages" really exist?

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