Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 369

369 Arctic Yearbook 2014   sustainable local development without mining (Chernovski 2012). Moreover, Kolokol’tsev argued that for the overall wellbeing of the community, investment should be directed to LGOK instead of tourism. Although positive, the development of tourism would be of secondary importance in comparison with any future success in the development of the main industrial field on which Revda was created (Sivonen 2012). The Russian Lapland (Russkaya Laplandiya) plan turned out to be unsuccessful in 2012. In June 2012 the town’s representatives still officially believed that the plan would be implemented (Mamedov, personal communication, June 18, 2012) despite the fact that the private investment needed for any plan to succeed had disappeared at the end of 2011 (Mihailov 2011; Chernovski 2012). However, the failure of the programme was a typical example of plans in Russian single-industry towns. It was one of those failed projects that led to the closure of the programme designed to support single-industry towns produced by the Russian government (Chernovski 2012). Federal subsidies in the amount of 150 million rubles were assigned to the Russian Lapland project, while a private investor had been expected to invest 450 million roubles (Chernovski 2012; Varenik 2012). However, Revda could not use this federal subsidy for its tourism project because it was conditional on the private investor investing simultaneously in the proposed project (Mihailov 2011; Chernovski 2012). The case of Revda was not the only megalomaniac or unrealistic idea in the programme of Russian singleindustry towns. Fictional and unrealistic investment projects were also drawn up in other singleindustry towns. Unsuccessful projects were common in towns which calc