Soviet probes showed chronic issues with three major things:
1) Propulsion over extended durations
2) Radiation protection
3) Computer program stability and testing
Sadly, all the three are critical to outer planets missions in general, and to any orbiter missions in particular (particularly Jupiter, with its nasty radiation fields). I'd give poor odds for mission success, especially since the Soviets tended to see success when they were able to try something over and over until they got it right, which a limited number of Jovian probes doesn't really allow.
The natural progression would probably be as with the Americans--initial flyby-only missions like Pioneer or Voyager, followed later by orbiters if those are successful. A question is when they start launching--after 1973, the Soviets cut back to focusing their efforts on Venus, where they were experiencing successes, and left Mars and anything beyond to the Americans. I'm not sure a couple abortive flyby probes failing to leave LEO or glitching out mid-coast and never entering orbit of Jupiter would convince them to spend more money there, too.
Also, when it comes to anything more than a flyby, there's another problem. Proton's hypergolic or kerolox stages show increasingly poor performance as the required delta-v increases, and that really bites with the high C3 required for Jupiter-bound trajectories, which is something like 85 km^2/s^2 IIRC. Using Silverbird, I work out that Proton maxes out at about 1.3 tons to that orbit, so an adaption of the 3+ ton Mars bus is right out. Knocking even more off that mass as fuel for an orbital entry means an orbiter somewhere under a ton, which is a very small probe.