Potemkin villages - myth or reality?

Phraseologism "Potemkin villages" firmly entered into use, as a symbolic interpretation of fraud, ostentatiousness, swindle. The phrase has existed for nearly 250 years, since the historic trip of Empress Catherine the Second to the Crimea. The journey took place in 1787, after the end of the war with the Ottoman Empire, as a result of which territories to the north of Tauris joined under Russia, under the general name Novorossia.

Favorite of Catherine Grigory Potemkin of Tauride, with whom the Empress was in close relations and, according to historians, even married him, decided to amaze her lover with an unprecedented spectacle in scope. Along the entire path of the royal motorcade, many decorative huts, rural houses and all kinds of presence, churches, cathedrals and chapels were built. Hundreds of peasants worked in the fields, fat herds of cattle grazed in the meadows , children ran along the village streets. But all this was frankly fake, the houses were painted, herds of cows were moved from one place to another during the night of the empress and her retinue. On the way to the Empress’s motorcade, another “Potemkin village” arose.

Peasant families also moved under cover of darkness to a new location. Catherine the Second was struck by the wealth of land and the huge number of village people who tirelessly bowed to her along the entire route. Similar tricks have happened in Russia before, each governor tried to hide, as far as possible, flaws in his patrimony, to embellish reality, where to close unpretentious houses with high fences, where to lay a new road before the arrival of the authorities. And since senior officials came quite often, the “Potemkin villages” arose here and there.

However, such a large-scale performance, which was arranged by Prince Grigory Potemkin, was completely unique both in scope and in funds invested in the event. Everything was paid from the state treasury, and the “Potemkin villages” cost more than one million state money. The Empress’s most expensive gift was a salute with fireworks at the Sevastopol raid, where Catherine II saw the Black Sea Fleet in all its glory, but the ships were also mostly painted. Nevertheless, the picture of well-being along the entire path of the tsar’s motorcade from Kiev to Sevastopol was completed in the form of a gala dinner at the gallery of the palace in Inkerman overlooking the Sevastopol Bay.

Naval guns fired, fireworks took off one after another in the evening sky, the holiday was in full swing. The next day, the empress visited the city of Sevastopol. New streets and quarters were shown to her from afar, the facades of the buildings were covered with canvases with painted architecture, the “Potemkin villages” became part of Sevastopol. Catherine remarked in surprise: “... three years ago there was nothing here, but now I see a beautiful city, a large flotilla, a harbor, a marina. We must pay tribute to Prince Potemkin for his tireless concern for the state and insight in business ... " The noble Frenchman, Count Segur, who accompanied the empress on her Crimean trip, wrote: “It is incomprehensible to mind how Prince Potemkin managed to build a city, build ships, build fortresses and gather so many people for public service in such a short time.”