Potemkin Villages

This Dnieper River part of the journey has so burned itself into the world consciousness that it gave rise to the term "Potemkin villages," a synonym for convincing fakery used today by people who know little or nothing of the trip. Potemkin had enlisted the work of the populations of 20 villages to create an impression of happiness and prosperity that grew up ahead of the flotilla then faded behind it. The impoverished wretches that Catherine may have pitied on her girlhood trip were nowhere to be seen. There appeared English gardens containing plants superficially stuck into the ground and well-dressed dancing groups hurriedly (and harshly) trained for the occasion. Catherine loved English gardens and had an English gardener named Bush, but that's a detail from her other life.

All along the way, serfs had slapped paint on the fronts of buildings and had rushed into place facades with no buildings behind them. They painted cardboard roofs to look like substantial shingles. Every so often, the whole display would be broken down like a play set and put up again further down the river. Did Catherine guess the deception?

Her biographers disagree. Some think she naively gloried in the prosperity and well-being she saw in the countryside; others believe she clearly saw it as so much eyewash but went along with it. One biographer says that just normal cleaning-up and decorating had been done. Some historians believe the story of the fabrications was an invention of the Saxon ambassador who hadn't been on the trip but who treacherously gave false reports to western newspapers. Ligne and Segur, in their accounts, do not mention excessive displays along the shore. Some English persons living in or visiting the Crimea, Jeremy and Samuel Bentham, presumably independent observers, said the "Potemkin village" reports were exaggerated, and only lighting and boughs of evergreen decorated Catherine's pathway. Catherine had waved at brightly-dressed persons who came to gawk along the bank. Anybody who has ever fixed up a house for company will guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle.