politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

, a Potemkin village (Russian: ) is a construction (literal or figurative) whose purpose is to provide an external façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it actually is. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by

Grigory Potemkin Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski (A number of dates as late as 1742 have been found on record; the veracity of any one is unlikely to be proved. This is his "official" birth-date as given on his tombstone.) was a Russian mi ...

, a

field marshal Field marshal (or field-marshal, abbreviated as FM) is the most senior military rank, senior to the general officer ranks. Usually, it is the highest rank in an army (in countries without the rank of Generalissimo), and as such, few persons a ...

and former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. Modern historians agree that accounts of this portable village are exaggerated. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the

Dnieper River The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests. The structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be seen again.

Origin

Grigory Potemkin was a minister and lover of the Russian Empress Catherine II. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

and "liquidation" of the Cossack

Zaporozhian Sich The Zaporozhian Sich (, , ; also ) was a semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Zaporozhian Cossacks that existed between the 16th to 18th centuries, for the latter part of that period as an autonomous stratocratic state within the Cossa ...

(see New Russia), Potemkin became governor of the region. Crimea had been devastated by the war, and the Muslim Tatar inhabitants of Crimea were viewed as a potential

fifth column A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize ...

of the Ottoman Empire. Potemkin's major tasks were to pacify and rebuild by bringing in Russian settlers. In 1787, as a new war was about to break out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Catherine II, with her court and several ambassadors, made an unprecedented six-month trip to New Russia. One purpose of this trip was to impress Russia's allies prior to the war. To help accomplish this, Potemkin was said to have set up "mobile villages" on the banks of the

. As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight.

Historical accuracy

Although "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, a façade, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation, it is possible that the phrase cannot be applied accurately to its own original historical inspiration, and that the claims of deception were part of a defamation campaign against Potemkin. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potemkin's most comprehensive English-language biographer, the tale of elaborate, fake settlements, with glowing fires designed to comfort the monarch and her entourage as they surveyed the barren territory at night, is largely fictional. Aleksandr Panchenko, an established specialist on 19th-century Russia, used original correspondence and memoirs to conclude that the Potemkin villages are a myth. He writes: "Based on the above said we must conclude that the myth of 'Potemkin villages' is exactly a myth, and not an established fact." He writes that "Potyomkin indeed decorated existing cities and villages, but made no secret that this was a decoration". The close relationship between Potemkin and the empress could have made it difficult for him to deceive her. Thus, if there were deception, it would have been mainly directed towards the foreign ambassadors accompanying the imperial party.

Modern usage

In the

Old West The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that bega ...

of the United States, Western false front architecture was often used to create the illusion of affluence and stability in a new frontier town. The style included a tall vertical façade with a square top in front of a wood-framed building, often hiding a gable roof. The goal for the architecture was to project an image of stability and success for the town, while the business owners did not invest much in buildings that might be temporary. These towns often did not last long before becoming

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

s, so businessmen wanted to get started quickly but did not want to spend a lot on their stores. Many

Western movies The Western is a film genre defined by the American Film Institute as films which are "set in the American West that mbodythe spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier." Generally set in the American frontier between the Californi ...

feature this kind of architecture because, just like the original buildings, it is quick and cheap to create. Many of the newly constructed base areas at ski resorts are referred to as Potemkin villages. These create the illusion of a quaint mountain town, but are actually carefully planned theme shopping centers, hotels and restaurants designed for maximum revenue. Similarly, in '' The Geography of Nowhere'', American writer James Howard Kunstler refers to contemporary suburban shopping centers as "Potemkin village shopping plazas". Sometimes, instead of the full phrase, just "Potemkin" is used, as an adjective. For example, the use of a row of trees to screen a clearcut area from motorists has been called a "Potemkin forest". The glossary entry for "clearcut" in ''We Have The Right To Exist: A Translation of Aboriginal Indigenous Thought'' states that "Much of the extensive clearcut in northern Minnesota is insulated from scrutiny by the urbanized public by a Potemkin forest, or, as the D.N.R. terms it, an aesthetic strip – a thin illusion of forest about six trees deep, along most highways and fronting waters frequented by tourists." Another example is the phrase "Potemkin court", which implies that the court's reason to exist is being called into question (differing from the phrase "

kangaroo court Kangaroo court is an informal pejorative term for a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides, and is typically convened ad hoc. A kangaroo court ma ...

" with which the court's standard of justice is being impugned). "Potemkin village" is a phrase that has been used by American

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

s, especially members of a multiple-judge panel who dissent from the majority's opinion on a particular matter, to refer to an inaccurate or tortured interpretation and/or application of a particular

legal doctrine A legal doctrine is a framework, set of rules, Procedural law, procedural steps, or Test (law), test, often established through precedent in the common law, through which judgments can be determined in a given legal case. For example, a doctrine ...

to the specific facts at issue. Use of the phrase is meant to imply that the reasons espoused by the panel's majority in support of its decision are not based on accurate or sound law, and their restrictive application is merely a masquerade for the court's desire to avoid a difficult decision. For example, in '' Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey'' (1992),

chief justice of the United States The chief justice of the United States is the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States and is the highest-ranking officer of the U.S. federal judiciary. Appointments Clause, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution g ...

William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist (October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney who served as the 16th chief justice of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2005, having previously been an associate justice from 1972 to 1986. ...

wrote that ''

Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an ...

'' "stands as a sort of judicial Potemkin Village, which may be pointed out to passers-by as a monument to the importance of adhering to precedent". Similarly, Judge William G. Young of the District of Massachusetts described the use of

affidavits An ( ; Medieval Latin for "he has declared under oath") is a written statement voluntarily made by an ''affiant'' or '' deponent'' under an oath or affirmation which is administered by a person who is authorized to do so by law. Such a stateme ...

in U.S. litigation as "the Potemkin Village of today's litigation landscape" because "adjudication by affidavit is like walking down a street between two movie sets, all lawyer-painted façade and no interior architecture."''United States v. Massachusetts'', , 22 n.25 (D.Mass 2011).

Notes

References

Bibliography

* EircomTribunal, "2003 Potemkin Village Award", EircomTribunal.com, * * Goldberg, Jonah. ''National Review'', 19 April 2000. * Ivan Katchanovski and La Porte, Todd. "Cyberdemocracy or Potemkin E-Villages? Electronic Governments in OECD and Post-Communist Countries", ''International Journal of Public Administration'', Volume 28, Number 7–8, July 2005. * Ledeen, Michael. "Potemkin WMDs? Really?", ''National Review'', 2 February 2004 * Smith, Douglas (ed. and trans). ''Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin''
Potemkin Court
as a description of The

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants ag ...

(from the Washington Post)
Potemkin Parliament
as a description of the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

(''New Statesman'', 20 September 2004) * Sullivan, Kevin. "Borderline Absurdity", ''Washington Post, 11 January 1998. * Buchan, James. "Potemkin democracy" as a description of Russia. "New Statesman", 17 July 2006.

External links

New York Review of Books, "An Affair to Remember"
review by Simon Sebag Montefiore of Douglas Smith, ''Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin''

{{Disinformation Hoaxes 1787 in the Russian Empire Propaganda techniques Propaganda Propaganda in Russia Deception 1780s neologisms Eponyms