As far as I can judge there are several questions:

1. Does Russian have a verb form that points to “this is being done”.?
No. There is nothing like Continuos Tenses and to discern between “I do it regularly” and “I am doing it right now” one adds “right now” to a verb, that is the same for the Present Simple and Present Continuos.

In fact, if I estimate difficulties of studying English for a Russian speaker tenses are the second the first are articles but this was discussed elsewhere . You can notice that in my previous message. I've been told (thank you, Dr.Bill) that I should have used “when I have done” instead of “when I did”.


2. Does Russian culture value the concept of being on time for an appointment?
It does. In fact, I find that trains are more reliable in Russia than in UK - most of them stick to their schedule. So I think that Mr. Turtledove is wrong, there are Russians and Russians, some come earlier and some are always late.

Am I correct thinking that the story itself is not something like memoirs but rather something completely fictious where the author invents whatever he likes ?