普京在过去的几周一直忙于扮演英雄角色，他首先加入了环保人士在太平洋北部追踪灰鲸的行动，用劲弩向灰鲸发射了一枚用于采集鲸鱼皮肤样本的飞镖。这位毫无畏惧的领导人接下来又从一架消防飞机上投水，准确命中在莫斯科附近燃烧的森林火情。普京随后又在新建的跨西伯亚道路上试驾新型节油型拉达车。最后，他会见了西方专家们，对俄罗斯的问题进行了坦率的讨论，他们都认为普京干得很不错。

　　这是俄罗斯电视台所公布的官方版本，事实与官方版本有一些差距。普京的拉达事实上有至少一百辆外国制造的安保车辆、警车、一辆救护车护送。为那次试驾活动甚至还准备了两辆备用拉达车。与西方专家对话的活动只不过是克里姆林宫所欣赏的俄罗斯问题专家的一次聚会，他们听取了大量的宣传材料，在视频中不停点头以表示赞同普京的观点。那头灰鲸是真的，不过，普京是在第四次发射时才击中它的。

　　政治作秀并不是一件新鲜事，也并不只限于俄罗斯。例如，纽约市长布隆伯格曾坐着一辆由司机驾驶的SUV前往地铁站，以便他每天坐地铁上班。但是在俄罗斯，正面形象与现实的差别更大。确实，漂亮的表面工作在数个世纪以来一直是俄罗斯生活的组织原则，波将金村庄就是一个例子。在八十年代末期，前苏联宣传机器说服了整个世界相信，前苏联将从经济和军事上赶超美国，尽管它的工业在崩溃之中。

　　波将金村庄现象依然存在的事实不仅是滑稽的，而且是危险的。

　　Over the past few weeks Vladimir Putin has been busy in many heroic roles. First Putin the conservation warrior joined naturalists chasing a gray whale across the North Pacific, and fired a skin-sampling harpoon into it with a crossbow. Next the fearless leader dropped a water bomb from a firefighting plane, scoring a direct hit on a forest fire near Moscow. Then Putin, green man of the people, test-drove a new fuel-efficient Lada across a new trans-Siberian road. Finally, he met with a panel of Western experts for a frank debate on Russia’s problems, and they agreed he was doing a great job。

　　Well—that’s the official version, as told by Russian television. The reality was a little different. Putin’s Lada was in fact escorted by at least a hundred foreign-made security vehicles and police cars, an ambulance—and two spare Ladas. The Valdai discussion forum was the usual carefully orchestrated collection of Kremlin-approved Russia experts who were duly dosed with propaganda and filmed apparently nodding agreement with Putin. The whale, however, was real and Putin did hit it with the dart é on the fourth attempt。

　　Political theater is not new, or uniquely Russian. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance, has been outed riding a chauffeured SUV to the subway he takes to work each day. But in Russia, the gap between fa?ade and reality yawns larger. Bloomberg takes one SUV, not a convoy. Indeed the pretty fa?ade has been an organizing principle of Russian life for centuries. Prince Grigory Potemkin put his name to the phenomenon when he put up the fa?ades of pretty villages along Catherine the Great’s route through the newly conquered lands of Ukraine and Crimea in 1787. As late as 1980, the Soviet propaganda machine convinced the world that it would soon overtake America economically and militarily even as its industry was crumbling。

　　The fact that Potemkinism is still alive and well is not just farcical: it’s dangerous. Putin’s hundred-car drive provided Internet viewers with a few belly laughs. But it’s less funny when, for instance, it recently emerged that managers at the Sukhoi aircraft plant supplied fake diplomas to 40 engineers, to show that the factory had achieved “modernization。” Or when a study by the business daily Vedomosti revealed that although the number of state-run media reports on anti-corruption cases rose sharply in the wake of a high-profile Kremlin campaign, the numbers of court cases rose by a slim margin, and the numbers of defendants jailed actually fell。

　　Russia’s elite believe that by spending billions on glossy projects like an international skiing center for the 2014 Sochi Olympics or on a new “innovation city” at Skolkovo near Moscow makes up for lack of progress on the rest of the sclerotic economy. Indeed, a recent report published by Russia’s Economic Development Ministry calls for using “Soviet methods” of propaganda to convince foreigners to invest in Russia. Out in the real world, Russia’s economy shrunk by 8 percent last year, and oil and gas production has fallen to Soviet levels thanks to a lack of investment in new fields。

　　It’s important to remember that Potemkin put up his villages to make an imperial achievement—conquest of a vast swath of the Ottoman Empire—seem even greater. Today’s Russia is papering over the reality of demographic decline, industrial stagnation, and the reality of a country falling behind the developed world in almost every field except the begetting of cash for oil and metals. At the same time, the Kremlin has systematically dismantled the institutions that could challenge the official version of reality, from the free press to parliamentary opposition to independent governors, prosecutors, and courts. The only window on reality left is the Russian Internet, known as Runet—where most of the material punching holes in official lies appears. But fewer than 25 percent of Russians use Runet regularly, and instances of crazy nationalist conspiracy theories far outnumber those of honest reporting。

　　Twenty-first-century Potemkinism is a worrying sign of how modern Russia is coming to resemble the we-pretend-to-work-you-pretend-to-pay-us days of the Brezhnev stagnation. As that period showed, if a government comes to believe its own lies, it can’t recognize rot in the society and the economy, which eventually leads to collapse. Putin may be a great shot, and who knows, the Lada (a marque that dates from Soviet days) may be the car of the future. But right now Russia’s leaders are not ruling with both hands on reality。