The article deals with key aspects of Halldór Laxness’ Í Austurvegi (In the Baltic) as the writer’s account of his 1932 two-month journey to the Soviet Union in the context of representation of the USSR during the first five-year plan period. The article highlights and analyses the problem of the apparent discrepancy between the description of some aspects of Soviet life and reality. Therefore, it raises the question as to the reasons for this discrepancy and concludes that it was based primarily on the factor of the writer’s personality: the author’s sincere sympathy for communist ideology and his desire to cultivate business contacts with the Soviet authorities accounted for the extremely tendentious description of Soviet realities. The article refutes the opinion that Laxness did not have the opportunity to get acquainted with those aspects of Soviet reality, the description of which could damage the image of the USSR abroad, although the most sensitive of them were out of the writer’s sight.