These are Potemkin translations-apparently definitive but actually flat and fake on closer inspection. Thus it is with the celebrated work of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who are making a decades-long project of presenting authoritative new English editions of the great works of Russian literature. Ever since, the phrase “Potemkin village” has indicated something that looks authentic and impressive-until one examines it closely and discovers its falsity. So he had the pasteboard facade of houses constructed along the road just far enough away to look real. Legend has it that Grigory Potemkin, the chief minister and lover of Catherine the Great, decided to impress her with the prosperity of lands newly conquered by the Russian Empire.
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