“In the midst of the fetes of Petersburg, I cannot forget the journey of Empress Catherine into the Crimea, and the facades of vilages, made of planks or painted canvass and set up, in the distance, at every quarter league of the route, in order to make the triumphant sovereign believe that the desert had become peopled under her reign. A spirit similar to that which dictated these illusions still possesses the minds of the Russians; everyone masks the evil and obtrudes the good before the eyes of his Imperial master. There is a permanent conspiracy of smiles, plotting against the truth, in favour of the mental satisfaction of him who is reputed to will and to act for the good of all. The Emperor is the only man in the empire who lives; for eating and drinking is not living”.
Potemkin village 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, a field marshal and former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River 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.
Marquis de Custine (1790–1857) was a French aristocrat and writer who is best known for his travel writing, in particular his account of his visit to Russia, La Russie en 1839. This work documents not only Custine’s travels through the Russian Empire but also the social fabric, economy, and way of life during the reign of Nicholas I.
