The fact that with Goncharov, and especially the initial stolen reels* that were shown all over then Soviet-dominated Ukraine before the premiere, predates the first public mentions of the Chechen Mafia suggests that Scorcese might actually have willed this incarnation of the Russian criminal underworld into existence. This was in 1972 and the first murder officially attributed to the Chechen mob was from 1974. This cannot be a coincidence.
* Some raw pre-production copies were smuggled into Soviet Union by a cameraworks engineer who was hired for maintenance of the Jupiter-manufactured optics used on the Naples sets. In a 1997 interview, the man said he manage to produce five differently ordered films, yielding entirely different narratives, and sold them to various bootleg theaters. The goal was to make the descriptions of the movie be so wildly inconsistent that no one in authority would believe a Western movie was smuggled in.
"It was big deal in 1972" the man said "I was on militsiya's radar for some months, but [they] left me alone. I say to them yes we are hired to work uh the cameras on the movie, I talked of movie with friends and they say what they say! Not remember [story] only title and [stupid clocks]! So until Union falls, I was good! Never interogated!"
