Russian Revolution exam photo sourced from the internet included BattleTech Marauder robot

The VCE exam body in Australia have been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5,700 students.



Exams for the popular History: Revolution subject were supposed to include the artwork Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, which depicts events during the October Revolution, which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917.



But when students opened their exam papers they found an altered version of the work with what appears to be a large "BattleTech Marauder" robot aiding the rising revolutionaries in the background. A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) said the image was "sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet".



"The image has been altered but the alteration of the image won’t impact on the students’ capacity to answer the examination question," he said. "The VCAA will monitor students' answers to ensure that any student who has been distracted by the image will not be disadvantaged."