The Kirov case

[Jesper Norgaard Welen]

Thanks for considering the case! 

For what it's worth, you might check out this reference, which is the
closest to an authoritative reference (apart from wikipedia) that I could
find.

Wikipedia has a page about the Kirov Oblast' :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov_Oblast
this one has a direct link to the official Kirov Oblast web page in russian:
http://www.gov-vyatka.ru/
this web site doesn't seem to have a direct mentioning of the GMT offset,
althought I admit my 3 years college russian is not very able any more, but
there is a direct link to the Kirov page of www.gismeteo.ru which is
http://www.gismeteo.ru/weather/towns/27196.htm
again here I could not find the GMT offset directly, but the page has an
astronomic frame at the left side with a little moon, where the sunrise and
sunset times are 4:21 and 20:53. This corresponds to GMT+4, which means
GMT+3 with DST right now. In World Time Explorer I have Kirov on GMT+4 (+ 1
hour DST) at the moment, and showing sunrise and sunset as 5:18 and 21:57. 

I assume here that the Kirov Oblast would not put a direct link to a page
showing the wrong time for it, not even within sunrise or sunset. But for
Russia, we lack authoritative information both regarding current GMT offsets
and timezone history. It must be there somewhere (in Russia), but it's
really hard to excavate with only internet tools and a limited russian
vocabulary.

Regards
- Jesper

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert at cs.ucla.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2006 04:40
To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
Subject: Re: Russia +4 breakout oblasts


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