I've been creating a set of Web pages (see <http://www.mindspring.com/~gwil/tz.html>) with time zone data, mostly from the tz database, but doing considerable additional research. In the case of Russia, looking at time zone maps, I concluded that each oblast' lies entirely within one time zone, except Sakha and possibly Chukot. (Of course, that might have been an unsupported premise of the mapmakers.) I tabulated the time zone for each oblast' according to various sources. Here are the results I got for the five oblasti of current concern. Numbers are hour offsets from UTC. (If you use a monospacing font the columns should align.) Division |T|Ab|wtz|ent|MI|NO|WF|PCL|WF|RM|IAT|Qd|GU|tz Astrakhan'|o|AS|3 |4 |4 |3 |5 |4 |4 |4 |3 | |4 | Samara |o|SA|4 |4 |4 |4 |4 |4 |4 |4 |4 | |4 |4 Saratov |o|SR|3 |4 |3 |3 |5 |4 |4 |4 | | |4 | Ul'yanovsk|o|UL|4 |4 |4 |4 |5 |4 |4 |4 | | |4 | Volgograd |o|VG|3 |4 |3 |3 |5 |4 |4 |4 | |4 |4 | wtz: http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-russia2.htm (2001) ent: Rives McDow enteles map (2000-02) MI: http://www.mark-itt.ru/Collection/Russia/tz_rus.html (2001) NO: U.S. Naval Observatory map http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/world_tzones.html (2001-04) WF: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/reference/Low%20res%20PDF/low8 02700.pdf (2000-04) PCL: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/ussr_time_82.jpg (1982-03) WF: Map in printed CIA World Factbook (1992) RM: Map in the Rand McNally International Atlas (1990) IAT: IATA SSIM data (1991-02 to 2000-02, inclusive) Qd: Quid (a French encyclopedic almanac) (1993) GU: Hildebrands map of GUS (CIS) (1994) tz: tz database 2001b (2001) It looks as if some oblasti moved from one time zone to another a couple of years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that might account for some of the discrepancies in the table above. Gwillim Law