The Russian community in Salt Lake City is quite large and includes a church, a Saturday school for children, picnics, grocery stores, and a beauty salon. In Russian stores, you can find products that are familiar to us but exotic to Americans, such as birch sap, herring, lard, Doctor's sausage, dumplings, bagels, pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, dried fish, and much more.

Vlas Lezin moved from Kazan to Utah at the age of 17 and shares his experience of living here. He notes that Americans live well due to hard work and high taxes. When he worked in New York, where it took 80 to 100 hours a week, it was hard to maintain a sense of reality. According to him, 7 hours are spent sleeping, and the rest of the time is for work. His total taxes were 42 percent plus about 9 percent sales tax, resulting in half of his income going to the government. Despite the fatigue from such busyness, the awareness that he is not alone in this situation helps; everyone here works that much, it is part of the culture. In recent years, the number of working hours has decreased to 50-60 hours a week. There are no free kindergartens here; the cost starts at a thousand dollars a month, and this is not the most expensive place, so not all children attend kindergartens. This affects the future lives of children and shapes their environment. In his circle, there are examples of people who came here, became waiters, worked in two places, studied in college, and actively developed. When a lifebuoy is taken from the sea, you have to swim. He knows people who had serious problems with language, documents, money, and average education, but upon arriving here, they begin to achieve a lot. Why they could not do this in their country remains a mystery to him.