A Potemkin village is a deceptive or false construct (literal or figurative) that is designed to hide an undesirable reality or condition. The term is often used in politics and economics whose purpose is to provide an external façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it is.
The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. Potemkin erected phony settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River, then dissassembled the structures after she passed, and re-assembled them farther along her route to be seen again.
In the Old West of the United States, Western false front architecture was used to create the illusion of affluence and stability in a new frontier town. The goal for the architecture was to project an affluent image of the town, while requiring little real investment.
The Potemkin Village can be egregious in its intent to mislead – often projecting prosperity to mask dysfunction. What makes the Potemkin Village particularly frustrating is the amount of effort put towards creating this false image as opposed to taking steps towards actually addressing the dysfunction. The blame behind a Potemkin Village should be shared between leaders and followers alike. The leaders, while discouraged by being deceived, should realize that they have created a “yes-man” environment to incentivize deception.
Theranos
Fig leaf
Trojan horse
Façade