Before 1917, Litvinov wasn't doing simple agitprop. He was engaged in the most rudimentary military intelligence work: delivery of weapons and explosives, terrorist acts, assassinations. In 1905 Litvinov organized the reception of SS John Grafton, an English ship carrying weapons
for "Finnish" "freedom fighters". It was blown up to prevent the Russian government realizing the English involvement. The yacht Zora sank before reaching the Caucasus. We don't know much about the shipments that DID make it into Russia.
He moves from the Baltics to Paris, where he is appointed head of a firm through which the Brits place orders for military factories in Europe. Litvinov pretends to be an Ecuadorian officer. However, the weapons and bombs do not go to South America, but are smuggled to Russia.
What's happening in Russia? Gangs of heavily armed rebels are killing civilians, police officers, soldiers, priests, government officials. Across Russia, bombs are exploding, houses are set on fire & real street battles are fought in the cities, with machine guns and artillery.
One of the main things the communists did were so-called "expropriations", i.e. robberies. Banks are robbed, armored trucks are looted, collectors are murdered, all in broad daylight. The money goes to Europe, is laundered & goes on to fund communist/British black ops in Russia.
The largest of these, the famous 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, was organized by Krasin, executed by Stalin & the stolen money was laundered in France by Litvinov. The French find out about Litvinov's operation and banish him to the Communist Holy of Holies - The London Section.
He stays there until 1917 in complete safety. After the Revolution, the members of the Parisian, Zurich and similar foreign sections would be killed, but the London Bolsheviks were members of an immortal elite, utterly untouchable to Stalin's terror.
After the October Revolution, Litvinov pretty much served as the Soviet ambassador to the UK. While the war with Germany was going on, this "German agent" in London "wasn't noticed," but as soon as hostilities came to an end, the British staged a brazen spectacle.
Lockhart was a personal friend of Litvinov & Peters' handler, so it may be assumed that Lockhart was the actual mind behind the creation of the Cheka. He was imprisoned for a short while in Moscow, while Litvinov spent some time in a London jail. There was an "exchange" (evac).
Litvinov and Lockhart knew each other well; the latter mentions in his diary how he got drunk with Litvinov and Rothstein in a London restaurant before going to the Soviet Union. The "Lockhart scandal" and the "prisoner exchange" were all in good fun.
Upon arriving in Russia, Litvinov and Ivy Low settled in a luxurious Anglo-Gothic mansion built for rich Russian merchants by the Anglophile Schechtel. At first Litvinov spent most of his time abroad, e.g. participating in the secret Anglo-Soviet negotiations in Stockholm.
Then he became head of the Soviet embassy in Estonia - almost the only country with which the young republic maintained official diplomatic relations, and which the Bolsheviks used for backchannel diplomacy with the rest of the world.
After the worst excesses of war communism had passed, Litvinov spent more time in Moscow. His mansion served as a salon for the diplomatic corps and Moscow's upper class, both politically and culturally. Prokofiev and his wife visited often.
After his appointment as Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Litvinov gifted the mansion to the British Embassy. The residence of the English ambassador is now located there. Many things of the Low-Litvinovs have been carefully preserved, such as a fine concert grand piano.
This is not surprising because, in fact, Litvinov himself served as the British Ambassador to Moscow in 1918-1924. :)
Stalin's Purge of 1935-1938 was entirely painless for the Litvinovs. This is despite the fact that of the total of three thousand Soviet diplomats, two and a half thousand were shot or jailed. Seven deputy Foreign Commissars, 44 ambassadors & 24 heads of departments were shot.
Litvinov did whatever the fuck he wanted all his life. Stalin COULDN'T TOUCH HIM. Stalin had people shot for a LOT less than what Litvinov did. Look at how he talked to Western journalists after WW2:
And what did the "bully" do? JACK SHIT. He couldn't if he wanted to. Stalin also liked to attack the wifes of people he disliked. Prokofiev's wife got 20 years of Gulag. What happend to Mrs. Low? Not a thing, lol. She lectured Soviet officers at the Military Academy!
Ivy Low stayed a British citizen until her death. Under Brezhnev, she left the Soviet Union and spent her last days in England. She also took her daughter with her. :)
Stalin was insane with paranoia, he called Molotov and Voroshilov spies in their old age, the all-powerful Lavrentiy Beria was executed as a British agent. But Litvinov and his 3rd generation spook-wife? NOTHING. Truly, the Soviet Union was a Wonderland.
But Stalin killed Litvinov after all. Cowardly. In 1951, the former People's Commissar got in a very suspicious car accident. Events of the last period of Stalin's reign have been distorted beyond recognition. You can't trust a thing.
It is very likely that using the weakening of Britain and relying on the increased power of the USSR, the elderly dictator decided to achieve a larger degree of independence. For which he was quickly and quietly removed. He learned his place dying ingloriously in a piss puddle.
P.S. In 1955, a few years after Litvinov's death, respected British historian E. H. Carr (check out his biography!) suddenly came up with Litvinov's memoirs, in which he blamed the Revolution on Freemasons, rabbis from Andromeda, Germany & France - everyone except Britain. :)
The memoirs were exposed as a forgery by the Americans almost immediately & the British press claimed that the diplomat Carr, author of a 14-tome history of the USSR & specialist on Soviet history, became the victom of a KGB forgery.
The internal CIA expertise that concluded that the memoirs are a clear forgery, written by someone who was NOT a communist and probably not a Russian-speaker (there was no original manuscript & the translator was anonymous) was declassified only in 2000.
