In the early 1970s, when Portugal was living the last years of the Estado Novo, the conservative and totalitarian regime which the Carnation Revolution would end on April 25, 1974, some Portuguese writers decided to travel to the Soviet Union to learn about life in the socialist bloc. This journey produced four travel chronicles by Alexandre Babo, Óscar Lopes, Fernando Namora and Urbano Tavares Rodrigues. This work aims to compare the different approaches with which the authors discuss the main aspects of Soviet social policies, and to highlight the peculiarities of the Portuguese vision of the USSR in comparison with the various travel chronicles published in other countries after the October Revolution.