Certainly, but if the examiners would be accused of asking a too difficult question, as the article alleged, this would be defended by showing a more elementary approach. Or both of them, wouldn't hurt to have more ways of solving it. Unless the Soviet science was banned from using reductio ad absurdum proofs in some math version of Lysenkoism.

Out of curiosity, I've searched it and this article was posted to HN at least four times. Opinions aside, turns out it was merely a footnote in the exam pipeline https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761846