Back in his flat on the fifth floor of a run-down 1960s building on the edge of Kirovsk, Aleksandr Bondarev is sipping tea as he looks through photographs of himself as a film extra.

The series he played a role in was called Lenin’s Testament. It told the life story of Varlam Shalamov, the writer and labour camp prisoner who once worked at the mine in Kadykchan in the Far East.

Although Kirovsk and Kadykchan are at the opposite ends of Russia, their mountains and bitterly cold winters are similar enough for Russian TV to have recreated the grim world of a Kolyma labour camp right here on the edge of Kirovsk.

It’s tempting to see further parallels. Kadykchan with its sports hall, cinema and culture hall was an ideal Soviet monotown, and Kirovsk, whose same facilities have now been updated for the 21st Century, is still very much a monotown of the new Russia.

With apatite reserves expected to last for at least the next 80 years – that’s longer than the Soviet Union existed – most people in Kirovsk think the future is guaranteed.

With global-player PhosAgro at the helm and apparently committed to its social responsibilities as well as its business plan, the people of Kirovsk are also reassured someone has their interests at heart.

But a town which relies on one industry and one big company is always at risk of changes in both the market and the political climate.

Global markets are notorious for their fluctuations, and Russian business is notorious for its equally sudden changes of fortunes. There are many examples over the past two decades of Russian oligarchs who have lost everything and ended up in jail or exile.

It’s for this reason that despite all the efforts by both the company and the town to diversify the local economy, Kirovsk remains for now at least, on the Russian government’s list of most at-risk monotowns.