description: structure built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is
93 results
by Quinn Slobodian · 4 Apr 2023 · 360pp · 107,124 words
leave to pay the subsidies? The government’s own consultants conceded that “only some areas can get priority.”34 The zones seemed like window displays—Potemkin villages of the free market.35 But what if we took Butler’s idea of the “political animal” seriously? One geographer proposed that the zones were
by Norman Davies · 1 Jan 1996
’s lover at the time, it is not possible to believe that she was ignorant of the ploy; the principal dupes were the foreign ambassadors. ‘Potemkin Villages’ has become a byword for the long Russian tradition of deception and disinformation.1 Force and fraud are the stock-in-trade of all dictatorships
by Yaroslav Trofimov · 9 Jan 2024 · 399pp · 112,620 words
empress, Catherine the Great, Potemkin had governed that part of Ukraine after Russia detached it from Ottoman Turkey in 1774—and erected the famously fake “Potemkin villages” to impress the empress during her tour of the newly acquired parts of the realm. The Potemkine operation allowed the Ukrainians to threaten supply routes
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, 255 Poroshenko, Petro, xiii, 16, 20, 219, 356 author’s meeting with, 1–3 election of 2019, 1, 20–21, 79, 150 Potemkin, Grigoriy, 248 “Potemkin villages,” 248 Potemkine, 248–50, 264, 274 POWs (prisoners of war), 125, 172, 243–44, 279–80 prisoner exchanges, 21, 52, 163, 226, 279–80, 336
by William Taubman
a city in 1785. At its center was one of several fortresses built along a line from Azov to Mozdok by Prince Grigory Potemkin (of Potemkin village fame), at the bidding of his lover, Empress Catherine the Great, to defend the southern border of the Russian Empire. Cossacks settled the area, eventually
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inequality” only hint at the gross inequality between town and country, which official ideology pledged to reduce. Reading between the lines, one can detect the Potemkin-village nature of libraries, clinics, nurseries, and old-age homes that barely deserved their names.86 Raisa Gorbachev had made herself into an accomplished social scientist
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devoted a lot of time to concealing the full extent of the mess around the plant. As Chernyaev put it, “They had already set up ‘Potemkin villages’ before he arrived.”102 Visiting the home of an “ordinary worker,” Gorbachev was served lavish hors d’oeuvres, candies, and other delicacies. Boldin recalls that
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, 532, 578, 585, 598, 680 Porgorny, Nikolai, 174 Porotov, Nikolai, xxi, 77, 78, 135 “Portrait of Gorbachev,” 454 Portugalov, Nikolai, xxi, 492 Potemkin, Grigory, 10 “Potemkin villages,” 10, 113, 235 Powell, Charles, xxi, 198, 199, 200, 390, 391 Powell, Colin, xxi, 402, 408, 409, 412, 682 Pozgay, Imre, xxi, 483 Prague, 45
by Edward L. Glaeser · 1 Jan 2011 · 598pp · 140,612 words
New York, may have replaced unattractive slums with shiny new buildings, but it did little to address urban decline. Those shiny new buildings were really Potemkin villages spread throughout America, built to provide politicians with the appearance of urban success. But Detroit had plenty of buildings; it didn’t need more. What
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Pittsburgh plague Plato police policies, see public policies politics ethnic power and social groups and Ponti, Gio populations: loss of new building and wages and Potemkin villages Poulsen, Valdemar Poundbury poverty rural suburban poverty, urban African Americans and and attraction of poor to cities education and in favelas and helping people vs
by James C. Scott · 8 Feb 1999 · 607pp · 185,487 words
stubborn social realities and material facts. One response to this frustration is a retreat to the realm of appearances and miniatures-to model cities and Potemkin villages, as it were.1' It is easier to build Brasilia than to fundamentally transform Brazil and Brazilians. The effect of this retreat is to create
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painful memories of the dire consequences of many state schemes, most of which had miscarried. 48. Elsewhere, in Tanga for example, there are cases of "Potemkin villages" being created for a Nyerere visit and dismantled later. See Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, pp. 101-8. 49. Mwapachu, "Operation Planned Villages," quoted in
by Nick Harkaway · 18 Oct 2017 · 778pp · 239,744 words
a staggering violence. (She died of a stroke. There was, contrary to the prurient slander, no horse penis involved.) In short, I have been building Potemkin villages: faking it. The trouble is that with Gnomon in my head, and now with the crash dive, I’ve run out of places to put
by Andrew Keen · 5 Jan 2015 · 361pp · 81,068 words
employed by Catherine’s autocratic regime. Samuel worked for Count Grigory Potemkin, one of Catherine’s many lovers, whose name has been immortalized for his “Potemkin villages” of fake industrialization he built to impress her. Potemkin gave Bentham the job of managing Krichev, his hundred-square-mile estate on the Polish border
by Nandan Nilekani · 25 Nov 2008 · 777pp · 186,993 words
IT systems. Beyond our capital markets, the 1990s saw countless instances of failed IT initiatives. We have struggled here with what Keniston called India’s “Potemkin village” problem—we have plenty of showcase “pilot projects” that we have failed to expand beyond a state or city level. More than 80 percent of
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parties; populist; regional ; see also government, Indian pollution Pondicherry pongamia Pope, Carl Population Bomb,The (Ehrlich) ports post offices Post-War Plan of Educational Development “Potemkin village” problem Prabhu, Suresh Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana Prahalad. K. Praj Industries Prasad, Chandrabhan Prasad, Kalka Prasad, Rajendra Pratham preventive health care price controls prices
by Bradley K. Martin · 14 Oct 2004 · 1,509pp · 416,377 words
very sharp indeed. I was not the first visitor to wonder whether the authorities had arranged for visitors to see only showplaces, built—like a Potemkin village of Czarist Russia—to disguise underlying poverty and impress the credulous. My chance to take an unguided tour came after I realized that my hosts
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Il-sung’s vastly more splendid isolation in real palaces—combined with the efforts of underlings to report only good news and expose him to Potemkin villages that oozed fake prosperity—kept the Great Leader from realizing the full extent of his people’s plight. There is other evidence, however, that even
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Jong-il, 397 See also Public Security; punishment; purges; State Security; surveillance political offenders. See punishment; purges; surveillance post–Korean War period (1950s), 93–119 Potemkin villages, 178, 499, 518–519 power, electric, 177 Kim Il-sung’s priority use of, 499–500 Pyongyang system modernized, 662 shortage, 295, 329, 345, 503
by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone · 30 Sep 2009 · 518pp · 49,555 words
by Max Boot · 9 Jan 2018 · 972pp · 259,764 words
by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann · 17 Jun 2019
by Michael Barber · 12 Mar 2015 · 350pp · 109,379 words
by Daniel Brook · 18 Feb 2013 · 489pp · 132,734 words
by Parag Khanna · 4 Mar 2008 · 537pp · 158,544 words
by Christopher Wylie · 8 Oct 2019
by Rory Stewart · 13 Sep 2023 · 534pp · 157,700 words
by Steven Johnson · 329pp · 88,954 words
by Martyn Rady · 24 Aug 2020 · 461pp · 139,924 words
by Bethany McLean · 25 Nov 2013 · 778pp · 233,096 words
by Patrick McGee · 13 May 2025 · 377pp · 138,306 words
by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson · 5 Feb 2019 · 280pp · 83,299 words
by John Lewis Gaddis · 1 Jan 2005 · 392pp · 106,532 words
by Paul Kennedy · 15 Jan 1989 · 1,477pp · 311,310 words
by Misha Glenny · 3 Oct 2011 · 274pp · 85,557 words
by Bradley Hope · 1 Nov 2022 · 257pp · 77,612 words
by Charles Stross · 9 Jul 2011 · 350pp · 107,834 words
by Chris Hughes · 20 Feb 2018 · 173pp · 53,564 words
by Annie Lowrey · 10 Jul 2018 · 242pp · 73,728 words
by Anne Applebaum · 30 Oct 2012 · 934pp · 232,651 words
by Jeremiah Moss · 19 May 2017 · 479pp · 140,421 words
by Dan Morrison · 11 Aug 2010 · 307pp · 102,734 words
by James Howard Kunstler · 31 May 1993
by Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson · 2 Jan 1990 · 378pp · 120,490 words
by Rose George · 13 Oct 2008 · 346pp · 101,255 words
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
by Jon C. Teaford · 1 Jan 2006 · 395pp · 115,753 words
by Michael Shellenberger · 28 Jun 2020
by Nathan Hodge · 1 Sep 2011 · 390pp · 119,527 words
by Steven Pinker · 1 Jan 2002 · 901pp · 234,905 words
by Scott Anderson · 5 Aug 2013
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Aug 2020
by Steve Levine · 23 Oct 2007 · 568pp · 162,366 words
by Serhii Plokhy · 12 May 2014
by Peter Warren Singer and Emerson T. Brooking · 15 Mar 2018
by Adam Tooze · 15 Nov 2021 · 561pp · 138,158 words
by Cass R. Sunstein · 6 Mar 2018 · 434pp · 117,327 words
by Sandeep Jauhar · 11 Apr 2023 · 220pp · 67,661 words
by Steven Levy · 12 Apr 2011 · 666pp · 181,495 words
by Chrystia Freeland · 11 Oct 2012 · 481pp · 120,693 words
by Morgan G. Ames · 19 Nov 2019 · 426pp · 117,775 words
by Steven Brill · 5 Jan 2015 · 554pp · 167,247 words
by Sasha Abramsky · 15 Mar 2013 · 406pp · 113,841 words
by Andrew J. Bacevich · 7 Jan 2020 · 254pp · 68,133 words
by Mehrsa Baradaran · 7 May 2024 · 470pp · 158,007 words
by Sarah Milov · 1 Oct 2019
by Ray Taras · 15 Dec 2009 · 267pp · 106,340 words
by Mike Mullane · 24 Jan 2006 · 506pp · 167,034 words
by Robert N. Proctor · 28 Feb 2012 · 1,199pp · 332,563 words
by Benn Steil · 13 Feb 2018 · 913pp · 219,078 words
by Peter Lunenfeld · 31 Mar 2011 · 239pp · 56,531 words
by Fintan O'Toole · 22 Jan 2018 · 200pp · 64,329 words
by Fintan O'Toole · 2 Oct 2019
by Alan Greenspan · 14 Jun 2007
by Michael Lewis · 1 Nov 2009 · 265pp · 93,231 words
by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman · 17 Jul 2023 · 329pp · 99,504 words
by Satyajit Das · 9 Feb 2016 · 327pp · 90,542 words
by Richard Behar · 9 Jul 2024
by William D. Cohan · 27 Feb 2017 · 113pp · 37,885 words
by William Poundstone · 1 Jan 2010 · 519pp · 104,396 words
by Pierre Vernimmen, Pascal Quiry, Maurizio Dallocchio, Yann le Fur and Antonio Salvi · 16 Oct 2017 · 1,544pp · 391,691 words
by Alexander Zaitchik · 7 Jan 2022 · 341pp · 98,954 words
by Dan McCrum · 15 Jun 2022 · 361pp · 117,566 words
by Laura Shin · 22 Feb 2022 · 506pp · 151,753 words
by Neal Stephenson · 19 May 2015 · 945pp · 292,893 words
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel · 3 Oct 2016 · 504pp · 126,835 words
by Francis Fukuyama · 7 Apr 2004
by Erik Larson · 27 Jul 2011 · 291pp · 87,296 words
by Jimmy Soni · 22 Feb 2022 · 505pp · 161,581 words
by Victor Davis Hanson · 15 Nov 2021 · 458pp · 132,912 words
by Brad Stone · 10 May 2021 · 569pp · 156,139 words
by David Gerard · 23 Jul 2017 · 309pp · 54,839 words
by Steven Brill · 28 May 2018 · 519pp · 155,332 words
by Jeff Flake · 31 Jul 2017 · 138pp · 43,748 words
by Justin E. H. Smith · 22 Mar 2022 · 198pp · 59,351 words
by Benn Steil · 14 May 2013 · 710pp · 164,527 words
by Scott Rosenberg · 2 Jan 2006 · 394pp · 118,929 words
by Harvey Silverglate · 6 Jun 2011 · 389pp · 136,320 words
by Anne Kim · 384pp · 112,825 words
by Mark O'Connell · 27 Jun 2023 · 245pp · 82,536 words
by Diana B. Henriques · 1 Aug 2011 · 598pp · 169,194 words
by Michael Wolff · 3 Jun 2019 · 359pp · 113,847 words