As of 2011, Russia had 11 time zones, from the Polish border to near Alaska, a system so vast that a traveller could get a walloping case of jet lag from a domestic flight. In 2009, Russia was considering shedding some of its time zones. People running businesses in the far east were complaining because the regulators were typically in Moscow, which could be several hours behind. The issue blossomed at the end of 2009 into an intense debate across the Russian Federation about how Russians saw themselves, about how the regions should relate to the center, and about how to address the age-old problem of creating a sense of unity in a diverse federation that had been consolidated politically. In short, the issue concerned the challenges involved in a consolidated empire.
The full essay is at "Russia as a Consolidated Empire."