IKOR [Album of drawings and pictures]

“The pictures and drawings reproduced in this album have been inspired by the great progress of the Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union… The album is published by the IKOR in connection with its work in the United States and Canada in behalf of the Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union.” The Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (or in Yiddish, Idishe Kolonizatsie Organizatsie in Rusland), commonly known by its transliterated acronym of IKOR, was a North American organization founded in 1924 devoted to supporting Jewish collective farms in Crimea and to provide a humanitarian alternative for Russian Jews facing intense anti-Semitism. When in 1928, the Soviet Union abandoned the idea of Jewish settlement in Crimea and instead endorsed the formation of a Jewish Autonomous Republic in the Birobidzhan region of the Soviet Far East, IKOR followed suit. The Soviet central leadership encouraged the project since financial assistance received from Jews overseas relieved Moscow from the need to allocate their own resources for the cause. Moreover, the Jewish colonization of the Birobidzhan region constituted an ideological alternative to the Zionist ideal. <<Russia: >> See also Lot 322.