How to correctly set the Debian Linux time and time zone?

Question

Time Zones

It seems like some kind of jamb in the date settings, I don’t understand -

# cat /etc/timezone
Europe/Moscow

#date 
Mon Sep 28 17:04:02 MSK 2015

# TZ=MSK date
Mon Sep 28 14:06:24 MSK 2015

Is that how it should be??

Answer 1

why is 'Europe/Moscow' identical to 'GMT-3'? Everywhere should be GMT+3..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#Area :
"Eagerness overcomes everything!
It happens that zeal also overcomes reason."
(Kozma Prutkov).