| 释义 |
Potemkin|pəʊˈtɛmkɪn|
The name of Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739–91), favourite of Empress Catherine II of Russia, used attrib. to designate the sham villages reputed to have been erected, on his orders, for Catherine's tour of the Crimea in 1787. Also transf. and fig.
1938G. Soloveytchik Potemkin xiv. 283 Potemkin's detractors have asserted that he built whole sham villages, with cardboard houses and paste palaces..in order to create a false picture of progress and prosperity... The originator of these stories..was the Saxon diplomat Helbig, and the legend of ‘Potemkin Villages’.. as a synonym of sham owes its inception to him. 1954Koestler Invis. Writing xi. 132 This was not a Potemkin village. It was something more curious. 1965B. Pearce tr. Preobrazhensky's New Econ. 39 To lull the vigilance of..the working class, to keep it in the dark about the dangers which threaten it, and to weaken its will with Potemkin villages of childish optimism when it needs to continue to wage the heroic struggle of October. 1967I. Marder Paris Bit i. 27 Paris is above all a city of façades, an enormous Potemkin village. 1973J. Shub Moscow by Nightmare vii. 77 The new Kalinin Prospekt—the latest Potemkin Village of soaring glass and aluminium. 1974Guardian 21 Mar. 3/8 It is good diplomacy..to pretend that the EEC is a political entity... But don't expect serious decisions from a political Potemkin village. |