Didn’t they do this in Russia a few hundred years back for a Czar(ina)? Make these little villages to show happy people in them when the real conditions were bleak? Potempkin land or something?
Potemkin Villages.
You’re remembering what were called “Potemkin villages”.
You’re remembering what were called “Potemkin villages”.
Back in the USSA.
The usual phrase is "Potemkin village." It means something set up to fool the gullible into believing the setters-up are in better control of a situation than they really are.
It's named after Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739-1791). When he was alive, he was better known for servicing Catherine the Great (1729-1796). It is not true that Catherine preferred stallions.
The story behind "Potemkin Village" involves Crimea (of all places), which at the time (1787) had recently been separated from the Ottoman Empire and annexed by Russia. After all the turmoil, Crimea was understandably a bit of a mess. Potemkin had been made governor, charged with rebuilding it and bringing in prosperous Russian settlers.
Catherine was leading a group of ambassadors on a tour of the region on a barge. It was important that the ambassadors report back to their governments that Russia was in firm control. Each day, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would set up a fake village for the visitors to see. Each night, they took it apart, and set it up again where the visitors' barge would be the following day.
Potemkin village was basically a tilt up town much like a movie set where the Russians shot propaganda films with actors playing happy, healthy cheerful villagers.
Total sham much like our democrat party of today.
NAZIS did this in Poland during the Second World War showing happy Poles in scenarios created for propaganda.