A "Potemkin village" (puh-TEM-kin VIL-uj) is a false front. The word is derived from the elaborate fake villages that Russian general Grigori Potemkin purportedly had built to impress Catherine the Great when she toured the Crimea in 1787.

Example (as used by Kevin Sullivan in The Washington Post): "It’s a lie, a huge Potemkin village designed to give North Korea the appearance of modernity."

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