I’m, of course, alluding to Grigori Potemkin, Catherine The Great’s advisor and perhaps paramour. When she made a state visit to the Crimea in 1787, she sailed down the Dnieper River in order to see how the peasants of that region of Imperial Russia were faring. Along her route, Potemkin had constructed facades of attractive homes, a so-called Potemkin Village, very much like the movies sets we’re accustomed to see in Hollywood movies.