Russia +4 breakout oblasts

[Paul Eggert]

Jesper Norgaard Welen <jnorgard at prodigy.net.mx> writes:

> The following maps show the oblast'
> Kirovskaya, Saratovskaya, Volgogradskaya and Astrakhanskaya to be on GMT+4
> ...
> Oscar is correct that since 2001 these were no longer on GMT+4 but had
> returned to GMT+3, but this return we have not documented with one or
> several timezones.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Shanks & Pottenger (2003) say Kirov is still at +0400, which sounds
incorrect to me; and that Saratov, Volgograd, and Astrakhan switched
to +0300 on 1992-03-29 02:00.  Of all these, Volgograd has the largest
population, so I suppose it should get a tz entry.

I'll need to review Shanks & Pottenger, and Shanks's earlier editions,
to see how this error crept into the tz database.  Also, I'm puzzled
by the disagreement about Kirov.

Here's a draft entry for Volgograd, given what I know now.

#
# Astrakhanskaya oblast', Kirovskaya oblast', Saratovskaya oblast',
# Volgogradskaya oblast'.  Shanks & Pottenger say Kirov is still at +0400
# but Wikipedia (2006-05-09) says +0300.  Perhaps it switched after the
# others?  But we have no data.
Zone Europe/Volgograd	 2:57:40 -	LMT	1920 Jan  3
			 3:00	-	TSAT	1925 Apr  6 # Tsaritsyn Time
			 3:00	-	STAT	1930 Jun 21 # Stalingrad Time
			 4:00	-	STAT	1961 Nov 11
			 4:00	Russia	VOL%sT	1989 Mar 26 2:00s # Volgograd T
			 3:00	Russia	VOL%sT	1991 Mar 31 2:00s
			 4:00	-	VOLT	1992 Mar 29 2:00s
			 3:00	Russia	VOL%sT