It will be part of the required syllabus, though Russian tests are not usually taken by means of essays. They are oral exams that students take one by one. There are usually 3 people, the teacher and two other educators or officials, and a stack of cards. The student is required to answer 2-3 cards pulled at random, and the examiners are allowed to ask questions to force deeper answers in certain areas.

I enjoyed the format when I studied in Russia because it allowed me to turn the discussion to emphasize the things I remembered rather than the things I forgot. If you can talk for ten minutes about the obvious comparisons between Pilate from Master and Margarita and Stalin, then you can skip over the fact that you forgot who the different literary types at the Griboedov house were supposed to represent (and, noting in passing that they are "caricatures of Bulgakov's contemporaries", you can then skip to the irony of the name of the house and the manner in which Berlioz had just been killed, as he was decapitated just like Griboedov, though not by a mob of enraged Iranians).