Time in Russia - History of Zone Boundaries

History of Zone Boundaries

In the Russian Empire, most of the nation observed solar time. During the late 19th century, Moscow Mean Time was introduced, originally at UTC+02:30. However, when the Soviet Union was created, Moscow Time became UTC+02 and the various other time zones were introduced throughout Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union. On June 21, 1930, the Soviet Union advanced all clocks by one hour, effectively making the nation run on daylight saving time all year. Russia and most republics in the Soviet Union turned their clocks back one hour on March 31, 1991, but Russia reversed this the following year.

In 1992, the Government of Russia issued a resolution establishing the borders of the eleven time zones dividing the country's territory. During the following years, various clauses of the resolution were superseded by other laws, re-assigning various federal subjects to different time zones.

The only federal subjects to be in more than one time zone are the Sakha Republic, which is separated into areas which belong to the Yakutsk, Vladivostok and Magadan time zones, and Sakhalin Oblast, which is in the Vladivostok (Sakhalin Island, and the two westernmost districts in the Kuril Islands) and Magadan time zones (Severo-Kurilsky District in the Kuril Islands).

In November 2009, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev proposed reducing the number of time zones spanning the country, as well as the abolition of daylight saving time.