MOSCOW  Vadim V. Vodyanitsky runs a fish processing plant in Russia’s Far East, and one question looms over his day, as crucial as the trawler schedules or the Pacific tidal patterns. What time is it in Moscow, 5,000 miles away?

There are many ways to measure Russia’s girth, but Mr. Vodyanitsky can speak to one of the most compelling: it has 11 time zones, from the Polish border to near Alaska, a system so vast that you can get a walloping case of jet lag from a domestic flight.

The time zones, set up by the Soviets to showcase the country’s size, have long been a source of national pride, but the government is now viewing them as a liability and is considering shedding some.

In today’s economy of constant communication, it is hard to manage businesses and other affairs when one region is waking up and another is thinking about dinner. Mr. Vodyanitsky, for example, has his plant on the Kamchatka Peninsula, nine hours ahead of Moscow, and his office in Vladivostok, seven hours ahead. But his business often depends on decisions by regulatory and banking officials in the capital. “It’s extremely inconvenient getting anything done through Moscow,” he said in a telephone interview. “For any activity, we often have to wait a day, wasting a whole 24 hours.”