Did Grigory Potemkin, one of Russian empress Catherine the Great’s ministers, actually have elaborate fake villages constructed for Catherine’s tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea? He allegedly had these “Potemkin villages” done in order to give Catherine a false impression of peace and prosperity in regions that in actuality were in turmoil and great poverty. A great example of how advisers can snow a decision maker, but did it really happen?
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You all remember Catherine the Great, right? Supposedly this woman not only mounted horses, she had horses mount her. Just one problem: As this column established back in 1978, the alleged equine trysts never took place. Same with Potemkin villages. Catherine II, who ruled Russia from 1762 to ’96, did indeed make a grand tour of the Ukraine and the Crimea in 1787, and her former lover Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin did lean on the peons to spruce things up in time for her arrival. Contrary to legend, though, there’s no evidence that he (or anyone else) manufactured the phony villages that are now so firmly linked to his name.
In 1783 Russia had annexed the underdeveloped Crimea, and Potemkin resolved to make it the showplace of Catherine’s empire. He founded the Black Sea naval port of Sevastopol, effectively giving Russia a southern coast; established several more towns, an arsenal, and other public works; built a formidable war fleet (15 ships of the line and 25 smaller vessels, by one account); induced tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of settlers to colonize Russia’s new southern lands; launched agricultural and manufacturing enterprises; and generally performed one prodigious labor after another. Meanwhile he bedded countless women–possibly including, if one can believe biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore (Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin, 2000), his five nieces. (And Montefiore is an admirer.) One reads of his life and thinks: I’m going to quit complaining about how I don’t have time to get the garage cleaned out.
