# Potemkin villages **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 14, 2003, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268 "2003-11-14T17:37:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/1 "2003-11-14T17:37:48Z")
Well, color ME confused. I always thought “Potemkin villages” were a Soviet thing, albeit named after an 18th century bigwig who may or may not have invented them, so imagine my surprise upon reading a column entitled [Did “Potemkin villages” really exist?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031114.html) to find no mention of the Soviets. So is everything I learned about the Evil Empire wrong? Or did Cecil just accidentally delete a couple of paragraphs before posting it? [http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1984/048421.shtml](http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1984/048421.shtml) > [@](#): > > Mr. Malaurie also wrote about the visit to Ukraine of French statesman Edouard Herriot, leader of the Radical Socialist Party, who was shown “Potemkin villages” by Soviet authorities and later reported that there was no famine in that country. [http://laetusinpraesens.org/docs/potemkin.php](http://laetusinpraesens.org/docs/potemkin.php) > [@](#): > > Thereafter “Potemkin’s Village” became synonymous with autocratic attempts to create images that were designed both to hide the unpleasant realities of Russian life and to keep foreign eyes from detecting them. I was told that this was S.O.P. for the Soviets when foreign dignitaries came to visit–that not only would villages, factories, etc. simply be tidied up, but that also sometimes entire villages and factories full of happy comrades would be set up, to be dismantled as soon as the cavalcade of official visitors moved on. Is not so? Is merely capitalist Urban Legend? ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/2 "2003-11-14T19:09:38Z")
My father’s father was born in a “Potemkin village,” in 1890: EKATERINOSLAV, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the right bank of the Dnieper above the rapids . . . On the site of the city there formerly stood the Polish castle of Koindak, built in 1635, and destroyed by the Cossacks. The existing city was founded by Potemkin in 1786, and in the following year Catherine II. laid the foundation-stone of the cathedral, though it was not actually built until 1830-1835. On the south side of it is a bronze statue of the empress, put up in 1846. Paul I. changed the name of the city to Novo-rossiysk, but the original name was restored in 1802. ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/3 "2003-11-14T20:52:40Z")
I guess you would call this a “PotemKIM Village”, but right across the DMZ in Korea is a town constructed solely for propaganda purposes. No-one lives there, and the lights come on and go off at the exact same time every night and day. They also pump loud Norht Korean Nationalist songs and speeches twelve out of every twenty four hours. Fun stuff, but kinda creepy when you see ALL the lights in the town come on at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/4 "2003-11-14T21:33:29Z")
I see Cecil’s article on whether Potemkin actually created “Potemkin Villages” for Catherine the Great, and what extremist regimes do these days to hide the truth about their countries from foreign eyes as two different things, **DDG**. As Cecil wrote, the term is an invention from Westen Europe – and has just been applied to the dandying up even Hitler did with concentration camps. ---
**Author:** ![Perry\_Stalsis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/22d042/32.png) [@Perry\_Stalsis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perry_Stalsis)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/5 "2003-11-14T21:39:25Z")
Cecil, I think I did a “gotcha,” found an error YOU made! Yes! It was in your response to the question about the Potemkin Villages. My brother is married to a woman from Odessa, Ukraine. She says that it is a common mistake, but many people call Ukraine, The Ukraine. That’s like saying The Vermont, or The Texas. Ukraine WAS a part of the former Soviet Union and now is an independent country. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2003, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/6 "2003-11-14T23:33:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Perry Stalsis \* > \*\*My brother is married to a woman from Odessa, Ukraine. \*\* Oooh, my mother’s mother was born in Odessa–maybe we’re related! You know Bea? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2003, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/7 "2003-11-15T00:07:43Z")
Who cares if the Soviets copied the term and scenario? What part of Cecil’s assertions > [@](#): > > These tall tales originated with the Saxon envoy to Catherine’s court, Georg von Helbig, who was not, safe to say, Potemkin’s bud. Von Helbig did not make the trip to the Crimea, but in his diplomatic dispatches (and in a Potemkin biography completed almost a decade after the man’s death in 1791) he evidently passed along gossip circulating in the Russian capital at Saint Petersburg. Shows you the power of the written word. Though Potemkin may have tarted up reality a bit, he did in fact build the fleet, arsenal, ports, and so on that dazzled Catherine’s court. But thanks to von Helbig’s coinage Potemkinsche Dörfer (“Potemkin villages”), the prince’s name is known to posterity as a synonym for sham. don’t you believe? Would he invent the German phrase _Potemkinsche Dorfer_? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2003, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/8 "2003-11-15T19:21:13Z")
I wasn’t saying I didn’t believe it; I was saying that I expected a reference to the Soviets. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2003, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/9 "2003-11-15T19:22:35Z")
…Like, “The Soviets appropriated the technique to obfuscate about the success of their Evil Empire, which is also known as ‘Potemkin villages’…” ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2003, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/10 "2003-11-15T22:45:49Z")
Ah. I can see what you’re getting at, now, **DDG**. Perhaps the article’s title should have been something like: “Did Potemkin really create ‘Potemkin Villages’?” Yes. That “Potemkin Villages” have most likely been created since, leads to misunderstanding. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/11 "2003-11-17T01:03:17Z")
“Ukraine”, I am told, means “frontier”. At any rate, “The Ukraine” was, willy-nilly, the standard form in English until after the fall of the USSR, after which Ukraine, as a nation-state, demanded the dignity of having the “the” removed. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/potemkin-villages/213268/12 "2003-11-17T14:44:10Z")
Actually, given standard English uses, we should call them “Ukrainia”.