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She cultivated a deep friendship with her editor at the magazine, Rachel MacKenzie, as the two women traded professional and personal news in letters that travelled across the Iron Curtain. In the 1960s, she began writing short stories, many of which were published in her favourite American publication, The New Yorker. On occasion, she still received Western visitors whom she’d first invited into her Moscow home decades before, at the height of Maxim’s diplomatic career. After her husband’s death, Ivy’s world in Moscow narrowed considerably. She was celebrated as ‘a lady who would give a straight answer to a fair question’ – even when she delivered unwelcome criticisms of American life. She wasn’t a Bolshevik like her husband, but instead Madame Litvinoff – a brash but winning personality whose honest opinions rolled off her tongue in melodic British English. She appealed to Americans with her no-nonsense banter and quick wit. Ivy emerged on the Washington scene as a people’s ambassadress – a trusted voice who could speak plainly about Soviet life and translate its realities to the American people.
She was admired for her ‘complete lack of chichi’. She was celebrated as a ‘friendly, intelligent lady’ whose warmth transformed the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, making it at once ‘fabulous’ and cozy.
In 1942, The New York Times claimed that, while Maxim ‘was the man responsible for putting Soviet Russia and the US back on speaking terms again’, it was Ivy who was now ‘winning the friends and influencing a great many people’.
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