The only evidence of Old Russia being larger is a comment a developer made, there's no actual evidence of it. Old Chicago was a very well known piece of concept art, pick any game you want and you'll find a lot of concept ideas not implemented in the final version. We don't know why the scene with crow was cut, all we can do is speculate about, it doesn't mean the story was going to be different, it just means a cut scene was cut before the game came out. It's fun to believe there's a conspiracy going on, but it's not. Its just fan speculation fueled by pre-release hype.