[dedward]

It's arbitrary to a degree, but having a single timezone for Russia, or even the US, would amplify the effect. It's no big deal now because you are used to season changing, sunrise changing, etc - but if suddenly you had to get up for work and endure, say, 5 hours of darkness, or perhaps only 1 hour of daylight left..... it would be ugly. That's why we have timezones.

[anigbrowl]

Couldn't you just get up at, say, noon, work from 2pm until 10pm, and go to bed at 4am? This would be a bit confusing at first but it's basically what people do now. Solar noon would be at a different chronological time for everyone outside of GMT but you'd only have to make the adjustment once, plus it would provide an economic stimulus to compass manufacturers :-)

[pavel_lishin]

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. I didn't mean that the whole country would get up at 8am, no matter what the local solar time was. That would be kind of ridiculous.