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Potemkin village

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Potemkin villages or Potyomkin villages (Russian: Потёмкинские деревни) is an idiom based on a historical myth. According to the myth, there were fake settlements purportedly erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to this story, Potyomkin, who led the Crimean military campaign, had hollow facades of villages 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' eyes.

General Potemkin villages

Modern historians are divided on the degree of truth behind Potemkin villages. While tales of the fake villages are generally considered exaggerations, some historians dismiss them as malicious rumors spread by Potyomkin's opponents. These historians argue that Potyomkin did mount efforts to develop the Crimea and probably directed peasants to spruce up the riverfront in advance of the Empress's arrival. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potyomkin'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.[1]

Aleksandr Panchenko, an authoritative specialist on 19th century Russia, used original correspondence and memoirs to conclude that the Potyomkin villages are a myth. He writes: "Based on the above said we must conclude that the myth of "potyomkin villages" is exactly a myth, and not an established fact."[2] Panchenko writes that "Potyomkin indeed decorated cities and villages, but made no secret that this was a decoration".[3]

Also, the close relationship between Field Marshal Potyomkin and Empress Catherine made it likely that she was aware of the fictitious nature of the villages. Thus, the deception would have been mainly directed towards the foreign ambassadors accompanying the imperial party.[4]

Regardless, Potyomkin had in fact directed the building of fortresses, ships of the line, and thriving settlements, and the tour – which saw real and significant accomplishments – solidified his power. So, while "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation, the phrase may not apply to its original context.

According to a legend, in 1787, when Catherine passed through Tula on her way back from the trip, the local governor, Mikhail Krechetnikov, indeed attempted a deception of that kind in order to hide the effects of a bad harvest[5].

Modern uses

"Potemkin village" has also frequently[citation needed] been used to describe the attempts of the Soviet government to fool foreign visitors. The government would take such visitors, who were often already sympathetic to socialism or communism, to select villages, factories, schools, stores, or neighborhoods and present them as if they were typical, rather than exceptional. Given the strict limitations on the movement of foreigners in the USSR, it was often impossible for these visitors to see any other examples.[6] A recent BBC series reported that in 1952 Doris Lessing, a British writer who has since won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was part of a delegation visiting the Soviet Union. Her memories of the trip are clear and unforgiving: “I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’... that’s what my role was. I can’t understand why I was so gullible.” The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and American journalist Walter Duranty also visited the Soviet Union. They mingled with political leaders, were escorted into the countryside by Stalin’s secret police, and returned home to speak and write of ‘a land of hope’ with ‘evils retreating before the spread of communism’. However as stories mounted of mass murder and starvation in parts of Russia and the Ukraine, reporters such as Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge investigated and reported on ‘the creation of one enormous Belsen’. Duranty responded with an article in the New York Times headed ‘Story of the famine is bunk’, and got an exclusive interview with Stalin. Soon after, Jones died and Muggeridge’s career nose-dived. Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer.[7][8]

Examples of Potemkin villages

The term "Potemkin village" is also often used by judges, especially members of a multiple-judge panel who dissent from the majority's opinion on a particular matter, to describe an inaccurate or tortured interpretation and/or application of a particular legal doctrine to the specific facts at issue. Use of the term 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. Often, the dissent will attempt to reveal the majority's adherence to the restrictive principle at issue as being an inappropriate function for a court, reasoning that the decision transgresses the limits of traditional adjudication because the resolution of the case will effectively create an important and far-reaching policy decision, which the legislature would be the better equipped and more appropriate entity to address.

For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court abortion case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey in 1992, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that "Roe v. Wade 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."[11]

Other uses

Construction or not, motorists and pedestrians in Bothell, Washington can enjoy a forest view

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 highway drivers has been called a "Potemkin Forest".

The term "Potemkin Court" implies that the court's reason to exist is being called into question; it differs from a kangaroo court in which the court's standard of justice is being impugned.

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."[12]

In fiction, The West Wing episode "Twenty Hours In America" (Season 4, Episode 1) had the character Josh Lyman quote president "Jed" Bartlet as saying "the challenge [of running the country] is too great for a Potemkin presidency..." Lyman also says in the episode "Freedonia" (Season 6, Episode 15) that his campaign staff should thank their "Potemkin advance team".

In the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Enron's trading floor, used to fool visiting analysts, is described as a "Potemkin Village". Traders were thought to be engaged in dealing with outside clients, but were in fact conversing with people in the same building and each other.

See also

References

  1. ^ The Straight Dope: Did "Potemkin villages" really exist?
  2. ^ Aleksandr Panchenko, " 'Potyomkin villages as a cultural myth," (rus) in Panchenko, O russkoi istorii i kul´ture (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000), 416. "В связи с вышесказанным должно сделать заключение, что миф о «потемкинских деревнях» - именно миф, а не достоверно установленный факт."
  3. ^ Aleksandr Panchenko, " 'Potemkinskie derevni' kak kul´turnyi mif," in Panchenko, O russkoi istorii i kul´ture (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000), 416. "Потемкин действительно декорировал города и селения, но никогда не скрывал, что это декорации."
  4. ^ Norman Davies, "Europe: A history" (London: Pimlico, 1997), 658.
  5. ^ http://fershal.narod.ru/Memories/Texts/Anekdot/12_Naryshkin.htm
  6. ^ Glasnost-Perestroika: A Model Potemkin Village by Steve Montgomery, from The Perfect Law of Liberty [verification needed]
  7. ^ Useful Idiots, BBC World Service, July 7, 2010
  8. ^ Michael Weiss,Arma Virumque, New Criterion, August 12, 2010
  9. ^ Tran, Mark (2008-06-06). "Travelling into Korea's demilitarised zone: Run DMZ". The Guardian. London: Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 2009-07-05.
  10. ^ Tohmatsu, Haruo and H.P. Wilmott, A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921–1942 (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2004) 38–39.
  11. ^ Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 966 (1992-06-29) ("Roe v. Wade 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. But behind the facade, an entirely new method of analysis, without any roots in constitutional law, is imported to decide the constitutionality of state laws regulating abortion.").
  12. ^ Kunstler, James Howard (1993). The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Touchstone.
  • Chen Jo-hsi. (1978). The Execution of Mayor Yin and Other Stories from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-12475-1
  • EircomTribunal, "2003 Potemkin Village Award," EircomTribunal.com, [1]
  • Goldberg, Jonah. "Potemkin Village in Cuba: Let's make one of our own", National Review, April 19, 2000. [2]
  • Katchanovski, Ivan and Todd La Porte. "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. [verification needed]
  • Ledeen, Michael. "Potemkin WMDs? Really?", National Review, February 2, 2004 [3]
  • Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin ISBN 0-87580-324-5 (edited and translated from the Russian by Douglas Smith)
  • Potemkin Court as a description of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (from the Washington Post)
  • Potemkin Parliament as a description of the European Parliament (from the New Statesman, Sept 20 2004)
  • Sullivan, Kevin. "Borderline Absurdity", Washington Post, January 11, 1998.
  • Buchan, James. "Potemkin democracy" as a description of Russia. "New Statesman", July 17, 2006.
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