On 10/02/2011 04:55 AM, Arthur David Olson wrote: ...
Sanjeev Gupta provided this link... http://government.consultant.ru/page.aspx?1223966 ...to Russian Government Decree #23 of 1992-01-08; eight ".png" scan files are available.
1992 Decree sections have bold headings; the headings include (in sequence): "2-M 3-M" ... Those are the ordinals in the instrumental case (in which the "-m" corresponds to the "-th"). The ordinals pertain to the actual demarkation of the international timezones (/chasovyye poyasa/, numbered 0..23) on the territory of Russia. The bold headings mean "the border between the Mth and Nth timezone".
BTW, the document only notes the possibility, but doesn't explicitly refer to the then actual (Soviet) practice for the large territories to observe the zonal time of the neighbouring timezone. -Yury