Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

Potemkin Village is a term - and a concept - with which we should all be familiar. The term’s etymology, according to a summary provided by the University of Phoenix on-line: “After Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, who had elaborate fake villages constructed for Catherine the Great's tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea”. His intent was, of course, to conceal the horror of actual life in the nether regions of the empire and to permit a blissful ignorance of the grim reality there to continue uninterrupted. As such, ‘Potemkin village’ has come to mean, according to the ‘A-Z’ dictionary, “a pretentiously showy or imposing façade intended to mask or divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition.” While the original Potemkin Villages may have deluded the elites in Russia at the time, history notes that reality would not be denied, rectifying the situation of extreme economic and power imbalance with the very real Bolshevik revolution and the bloody end to the Czars rule. Facades, it turns out, do not a city make.

Sadly, the lesson has not been learned. A more recent effort by our government is both amusing and frightening. According to Jim Brittain / jimbrittain@ncaddnj.org (and others), “In the early 1980's, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was expecting a visit from a number of (I believe) middle-eastern dignitaries. They were to land at one of the New York airports, and travel through the South Bronx, a neighborhood full of abandoned high-rise buildings. Reagan had many of the windows of these buildings (the ones facing the major roads) covered with shades on which were printed designs of windows, with curtains, shades, lamps -- I even seem to remember some with a cat sleeping on the sill (many were still in the windows years later). It is pleasant to think of Reagan making the entire South Bronx into a Potemkin Village.”

Of course, we now know this was an early example of ‘compassionate conservatism’, but at the time it was probably viewed by the impoverished residents of the area in less sympathetic terms. Closer to home and today, many upstate New York cities -- and many cities throughout the country in general – are veritable Potemkin Villages. Hudson, the town where I have located my office, is an excellent example. Warren Street is a collection of antique shops, ‘New York-style’ restaurants, galleries and upscale boutiques. ‘Luxury’ apartments and residences are visible up and down the street; dilapidated buildings have been renovated at considerable effort and cost to do this. On weekends the streets are clogged with BMWs, Lexus, Mummers and other luxury automobiles. Elegantly dressed woman and men stroll up and down Warren, shopping bags in hand.

But if you wander off Warren just a block in most directions, there exists another city. This one is much less affluent and a good deal less white. Housing is often marginal, cars far less shiny or new than those motoring up and down Warren Street. In short a perfect example of the increasing division of the United States along the lines of income and, even more distressing, race. Poverty is increasingly hidden from view in Hudson -- and in many other cities in the United States, I must add -- obscured by glittering shop facades and the almost obsessive media focus on the rich. Most distressing, those with power and money, those for whom Warren Street is the only possible destination in Hudson , can, like Catherine the Great herself, be blissfully unaware of what lies beyond.

This is the great danger: the Potemkin Village of the mind. In the final analysis the Potemkin Village in all its many forms can be reduced to a simple concept: the subjugation, manipulation, or ignoring of the ‘have-nots’ for the benefit and comfort of the ‘haves’. The majority of our leaders have never had to experience life outside ‘Warren Street’; how could they, with considerable private wealth, a comprehensive health care plan and generous pension benefits imagine the grim reality many of their own constituents face in these areas? Public policy is increasingly focused on maintaining privilege, protecting the wealthy and demanding that the bill be paid by those with less.