Nicola's fake economy
The story goes that in 1787, as Russian Empress Catherine the Great travelled in the Crimea, her minister Grigory Potemkin erected fake portable villages along her route as a façade to hide deep-seated poverty in the region.
The Potemkin Villages, as they became known, were the means by which the gilded monarch was persuaded that all was right with the country under her gaze even though the truth was the opposite.