According to legend, during the trip of Catherine II to the south of the Russian Empire, Grigory Potemkin ordered to build fake villages, which were supposed to demonstrate well -being in the region. We checked whether it really was.

The expression "Potemkinsky villages" has long become a synonym for ostentatious splendor, otki, and it is popular not only in Russia, but also in the West. The episode with which its appearance was connected occurred in 1787. Empress Catherine II periodically took trips to the province in order to monitor the state of affairs in the country. And this time, her choice fell on a vast zone in the south, some of which became part of the empire as a result of recent wars with the Turks. Fortunately, this territory was controlled by Prince Grigory Potemkin, the closest associate of Catherine, her secret husband and one of the most influential people in the state. A large -scale journey, which stretched for six months, included a visit to more than three dozen cities up to the southern coast of Crimea. The Empress with her retinue overcame 5657 miles (about 6000 km).

It is clear that it was necessary to carefully prepare for such a visit-examination. Already in 1784, the efforts of Potemkin in the region unfolded large -scale construction. Not only roads were built, but also entire cities: Kherson, Simferopol, Sevastopol - as well as others, smaller. In a number of settlements along the future route, a Russian army was located in large numbers. And here we approach the memoirs of contemporaries of Catherine, who became the basis for the formation of a stereotype at least in the West. In particular, the French traveler Alfons deius de Ples, who visited Russia only four years after the Tauride Voyage of the Empress, wrote:

“... Numerous villages, the subject of her admiration, were created for her passage and destroyed on the same day, and the unfortunate peasants, who came over thirty and forty Lie, to stand on the sides of the path and live in the houses for several days, were sent back. That was the invention of the genius of Potemkin, who managed to convince his monarchy that the country, revered by the desert, was flourishing. ”

De Piles is echoed by his compatriot Tibo de Lavo in his "History of Peter III":

“The art was multiplied by approaching the provinces of Potemkin. In some distance from the shore, the villages were visible; But the houses and bells were written on the boards as a decoration. The neighbors to the village of the village were built hastily and seemed inhabited; But those imaginary residents were forcibly for fifteen or even eighty miles. In the evening, they were obliged to leave their imaginary houses and all night went to play a comedy in the next imaginary village, which the Empress saw from afar. ”

In one form or another, this information was included in many historical jokes.

Путешествие готовилось очень основательно - Екатерина знала, что находится в фокусе внимания европейских держав

However, modern scientists with skepticism look at this legend. Thus, the Russian specialist Simon Sebag-Montifiora in his book Potemkin writes: “Already in the 1770s there were rumors that Potemkin’s activity in the south was a pure fiction. When it became obvious that this was not so, his enemies began to whisper, that the empress was introduced into a cruel error. The Saxon Messenger Georg von Gelbig, who did not participate on the trip, came up with the expression “Potemkinische Dorf” - “Potemkin villages” - a formula that entered the everyday language with the meaning of “False Visibility”.

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The legend of the "Potemkin villages" was based on the history of the cruise in the Dnieper. Gelbig argued that the settlements that the travelers saw were specially built facades - painted cardboard shields, each of which showed the empress five or six times. Thousands of peasants were allegedly torn from the house, brought from the inner provinces, and together with the herds of cattle at night they were transported along the river; A thousand villages remained abandoned, and many people died out from the following hunger.

The idea, which Gelbig called, arose a few years before Catherine's journey. When, in 1782, Kherson visited Kirill Razumovsky, the city seemed to him a "pleasant surprise" - undoubtedly because he was assured that the whole project was nothing more than a mirage. All foreigners who went south were warned in St. Petersburg that they were misleading: a year before Catherine’s departure to the south, Lady Craven wrote that “Petersburgers who envy Potemkin” assured her that there was no water in the Crimea at all. <...> For several years in a row the empress inspired that Potemkin came up with all his achievements. Garnovsky informed the prince: she is warned that she will see only painted screens, not real buildings.

Neither in the orders of Potemkin, nor in the stories of eyewitnesses there is nothing that would confirm the story of the "Potemkin villages". He began to prepare for the arrival of Catherine back in 1784: then the ruler of the Tauride region Vasily Kakhovsky reported that new houses are being built for the future visit of the Sovereign. Potemkin himself enjoyed temporary residences, but most of those in which Catherine then stopped were constant: the Kherson palace stood for more than a century. The Khan Palace in Bakhchisarai was repaired, wooden units were repainted, the garden was corrected, and fountains were repaired. The next year, Potemkin ordered to build new salt warehouses in Perekop, plant chestnut trees, and in Bakhchisarai "Big Street, where it has to be the entrance of its Imperial Majesty, build up good houses and shops." Orders for the repair of existing buildings are the closest to the idea of a "cosmetic fiction". Miranda, a completely unbiased witness, accompanied Potemkin on a trip, preceding the empress, and did not see anything reminiscent of a showdown, but only marveled at the scale of the done.

As for the merry settlements and their herds on the banks of the Dnieper, no one could move such masses of people and animals at the speed of the flotilla, especially at night. Potemkin’s inability to disguise his fiasco with a retired kitchen in Kaidak, when he himself had to cook lunch for two monarchs, only confirms that he could not transport thousands of people and animals over huge distances to deceive his guests.

Of course, in the cities on the way of the Empress, the governors ordered to reduce the streets, paint at home and hide everything unsightly. In Kharkov and in Tula, two cities that were not part of the route outlined by Potemkin, the governors really hid some facts from Catherine and built fake buildings: paradoxically, the story of the Potemkinsky villages reports that in reality the creators of this legend were different. Perhaps Potemkin can be called the father of modern political shows - but not a flat deceiver. ”

Sebag-Montephiore also quotes the participant of that trip of Prince de Lin,: “We heard the funny stories that there were cardboard villages on our way ... that the ships and guns were drawn and the cavalry without horses. Even many Russians who envied us, participants in the trip, will stubbornly repeat that we were deceived. ”

Count de lady indirectly confirms this version, who watched Potemkin’s activities in the 1780s, even before the historical visit of the empress: “I still encounter the new, fantastic Asian quirks of Prince Potemkin. In half an hour, he moves the whole province, destroys the city in order to re -rebuild it elsewhere, founds a new colony or factory. ”

And historian Vladimir Shirokov Writes One of the episodes of visiting the Empress Sevastopol: “In the evening, after all the ideas, the empress was shown a“ performance ”: a false town was arranged on the north side, which was bombarded, blew up and set fire to. And since there was a lot of fuel material, the sight was very spectacular. ”

News about such theatrical performances, transmitted according to the principle of sundress radio, could only strengthen gossip about supposedly real decorative villages and towns. In an article on this legend, academician Alexander Panchenko Notice: “Potemkin really decorated cities and villages, but never hid that these were scenery. Dozens of descriptions of the journey through New Russia and Tauris have been preserved. None of these descriptions made in hot traces of events have not a hint of Potemkin's villages, although decorating is mentioned repeatedly. ”

As for the evidence of Alfons de Freesia de Ples and Tibo de Lavo, the first Frenchman is known in his homeland as a mystifier, and the second has never been to Russia and its conclusions are based on the texts of the same George von Gelbig.

Thus, modern historical science claims that rumors about the "Potemkin villages" appeared before the visit of Catherine II to these lands. They became the result of the active activity of Grigory Potemkin, especially with respect to the construction of a new and the destruction of the old infrastructure. Moreover, these rumors are believed to be the empress to conduct an inspection. Of course, Catherine’s journey was accompanied by a certain number of decorations, but they were an element of design or at best closed some flaws, but did not have a very seriousness of entire settlements, and even portable ones. What was a decoration was presented as it.