Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia

The Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (Yiddish: ייִדישע קאָלאָניזאַציע אָרגאַניזאַציע אין רוסלאַנד, Yidishe Kolonizatsye Organizatsye in Rusland), commonly known by its transliterated acronym of ICOR, was a Communist-sponsored mass organization in North America devoted to supporting the settlement of Jews in new collective settlements, firstly in the newly established Ukrainian Soviet Republic and Southern Russia (Stavropol Krai), and latterly in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia.

The founding meeting was held in New York City in December 1924 and the initial mission of the organization was to raise money to fund Jewish collective farms in Crimea and to provide a humanitarian alternative for Jews facing anti-Semitism in Europe.

[1] Originally, the committee worked in partnership with its American contributors and Soviet authorities in order to support the newly founded large Jewish collective farms in the former Pale of Settlement, notably Southern Ukraine and the Crimea.

These "kolkhozes" (collective farms) attracted many former shtetl Jews from Ukraine and Belorussia who had previously fled to larger cities for safety, as well as those whose livelihoods had been disrupted in the requisitions and economic restructuring of the early period of Soviet consolidation.

[3] The meeting was addressed by Lord Marley, Dudley Leigh Aman, a British Labour Party Member of Parliament and leading spokesman for the Birobidzhan project in the United Kingdom.

[3] A key figure behind the scenes at Ambidjan was Jacob M. Budish, a member of the Communist Party USA and employee of Amtorg, the New York-based Soviet foreign trade office in the United States.

The organization was unable to withstand the anti-Communism of the McCarthy era; moreover, the creation of Israel in 1948 greatly increased the attractiveness of Zionism as offering an alternative for "Jewish Colonization".