Will Russia Restore Daylight Saving Time? MOSCOW - It's getting dark in Russia. This happens every year around this time: Russia is a northern country, with particularly long days in the summer - including "white nights" in some places - and very short ones in the winter. Yet of all the winters on record, Russians remember last year's as the darkest. In the fall of 2011, as he was nearing the end of his fantastically undistinguished four-year term, then president Dmitri Medvedev finally took decisive action: He abolished two of Russia's 11 time zones and canceled the biennial change from winter time to summer time and back. Resetting the clock even looked like it might be Medvedev's only legacy. He had talked a good line but seemed to leave the running of the country to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin. As a collector of clocks and watches, I'm not particularly fond of the twice-yearly change. The problem is, Medvedev stopped the clock in early autumn, while the country was still on summer time, or daylight saving time. That froze it one hour ahead of Russia's standard time, which, in turn, in much of the country was an hour ahead of its astronomical time. So last winter the sun began rising after 9 a.m.; adults were already at work and children at school by the time daylight established itself. And it was dark when they left their respective buildings, not having seen the light all day. Then there was the issue of electronics. Apple's operating systems, for one, never recognized Russia's new time. The publishing house where I worked kept all its Apple computers set back an hour otherwise they could not be synchronized with the server. To reflect Medvedev time, Muscovites had to set their smartphones to Baku or Yerevan time zones - a politically uncomfortable gesture for some. When antigovernment protests broke out in December, some of the participants carried signs demanding that winter time be brought back. As the dark winter dragged on, doctors and medical writers increasingly sounded the alarm on the risks of doing violence to the body's quotidian clock. Medvedev's decision came to symbolize Russian government work in general: ill-considered, dismissive of people's needs and, ultimately, both pointless and dangerous. So on the eve of the autumn equinox this year, a bill was filed in the Duma proposing to turn back the clock in Russia and restore winter time - forever. Russians would once again be able to catch a glimpse of light on their way to school or work in winter. And in the summer they would now be one hour closer to Western Europe. Said to have the backing of once-again-president Vladimir Putin, for a time the bill appeared certain to become law - and to humiliate Prime Minister Medvedev. But this was not to be. There has long seemed to be a tacit agreement between Putin and Medvedev: In exchange for having kept his chair warm for four years, Putin would refrain from embarrassing Medvedev in public the way he has embarrassed many members of his elite over the years. And last week Putin said it would be up to Medvedev's cabinet to decide how to get the country out of its clock mess. The bill was promptly withdrawn from the Duma, and a news-reporting cliché was born that perfectly sums up life in Russia: "Winter time will not return until spring."