Potemkin village

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.

[2] After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire and "liquidation" of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich (see New Russia), Potemkin became governor of the region.

[2] According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potemkin'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.

[7] Although "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, a facade, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation,[8] it is possible that the phrase cannot be applied accurately to its own original historical inspiration.

[9][10] According to a legend, in 1787, when Catherine passed through Tula on her way back from the trip, the local governor Mikhail Krechetnikov attempted a deception of that kind in order to hide the effects of a bad harvest.

[12][13] These create the illusion of a quaint mountain town, but are actually carefully planned theme shopping centers, hotels and restaurants designed for maximum revenue.

[17] "Potemkin village" is a phrase that has been used by American judges, especially members of a multiple-judge panel who dissent from the majority's opinion on a particular matter, to refer to an inaccurate or tortured interpretation and/or application of a particular legal doctrine to the specific facts at issue.

[18] For example, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), chief justice of the United States William Rehnquist wrote 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".