He had argued that it was time for change in Russia, but few expected that President Medvedev wanted to change time itself.

His suggestion to reduce Russia’s 11 time zones sparked intense debate yesterday among Russians who have long been proud of living in the world’s largest country.

If Mr Medvedev is worried about going down in history as the Man Who Shrunk Russia, he and his Government appear more concerned by the cost of running a country where people in the Far East have finished their working day by the time those in the capital turn up for work.

Officials said that they were preparing legislation after the President put forward the idea in his state-of-the-nation address on Thursday. Mr Medvedev said: “The examples of other countries — the US, China — show that it is possible to cope with a smaller time difference. We need to examine the possibility of reducing the number of time zones.”

There seemed little enthusiasm in Vladivostok, seven hours ahead of Moscow, to move closer to the capital. Tatiana Telitsyna, deputy director at the Institute of Mass Communication at the Far East National University, said: “Everybody was talking about this at work and their reactions were all negative. It would disrupt the usual rhythms of our lives and nobody has explained what the real benefits would be. All the social and economic effects on people need to be studied very carefully first.”

Gennady Lazarev, rector of Vladivostok Economics University, told RIA Novosti news agency that the country could have a range of only four hours, covering Kaliningrad in Eastern Europe, Moscow, the Ural Mountains region and Siberia and the Far East.

Arkady Tishkov, deputy director of geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told The Times that the existing time zones followed administrative borders dividing different regions rather than lines of longitude. Changes could easily be made, but would be justified only if they did not harm people’s health.

He suggested that it could hurt the economy by overloading energy networks as businesses shared more of the working days. Dr Tishkov said: “Energy supply is spread out evenly but there would be a spike in demand if companies were working at the same time all over the country.

“People’s productivity could also decline because their biorhythms would be disturbed. We all find it hard to get up when it’s dark and go to sleep when it’s light, and nobody knows what the impact of a big shift in time would be.”

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