Chili ended up tasting like indian food

I think you've got a wide berth of possibilities but what's above seems pretty restricted. What you are listing above sounds like a pretty straight-forward Midwestern American chili. It has the features of the standard chili spices, beans and tomatoes, with a nice variety of meats.

• To try to engineer a Russian chili I would expect more indigenous foods.

As @Cold suggests, beets would be great to add for their sugar content. However, there are quite a few American recipes that utilize potatoes, so you might seek those out. Are there other vegetables to substitute that you recall as more native? Other beans maybe? How about caraway, dill, chervil, tarragon?

Vodka would seem like an easy route to go to appease the indigenous aspect, but I don't think it would yield much results in terms of impacting the flavor; especially in the context of the extant chili recipe. Unfortunately, I can't see the benefit of buffeting vodka against the flavors of cumin, coriander, clove, let alone hot peppers. On the other hand, Russians produce some amazing beers (I am a big fan of Baltika), and I would recommend looking into switching to a lager flavor or Imperial Stout as I mentioned above.

But for real, my spin would be to approach this from a Solyanka point of view (which would definitely give you ceiling room to try incorporating Medovukha); or really any of the other amazing cold Russian soups. Or perhaps try to incorporate mini dumplings like Pelmani, mini Kotlety, or use Shashlyk-style prepared meats for the chili. I would also consider trying to get some lamb in the recipe, in particular at the expense of the chicken.

But don't forget, chili is all about what you want to put into it (<-- self-promotional plug); not what the standard template lists.

• The romantic version of the American myth about chili (in particular, Texas Red chili) frequently revolves around Cowboys planting peppers and onions on their most traveled roads. They would be carrying dried meats and, at night under starry skies, use kettles to cook the stew that became known as chili.
• What kind of story of Russian kindred spirit do you want to weave with your chili?

Near as I can tell, it's probably the local economics. It seems to me that the cost is different per "component" but would probably balance out in the end.

Chinese food, generally speaking, relies more on fresh vegetables (carrots, peas, bean-sprouts, broccoli etc.) and meat. This means that the storage costs and spoilage costs are higher relative to Indian food, which is higher in legumes and beans that are much easier and cheaper to store, and last forever when dry.

On the other hand, Chinese is generally quicker to prepare (think stir fry, though not only), which means less time on the fire, and less man-power used. Indian food usually requires more cooking time, which may mean that the restaurant has a larger capital outlay for stove space.

Aside from that, in my experience at least, Indian is usually a register above Chinese for "comparable" places. The Indian equivalent of a Chinese place serving simple rice and 10-12 stir-fry dishes would be a simple Thali bar, but there aren't many of those, as us Westerners like to order several different meat/vegetable main dishes at a time, as opposed to a set menu.

Anyway, note that I haven't done any proper costing of these type of food preparation.