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>> 107  Territorialism and the ICOR “American Commission of Scientists and Experts” to the Soviet Far East Henry Srebrnik Most of the world remembers the year 1929 for the New York stockmarket crash at the end of October, ushering in what became known as the Great Depression. For American Jewish Communists, though, there were other issues that same year perhaps more significant. Writing in May 1943, in the midst of World War II, Abraham (Ab.) Epstein, a prominent Jewish Communist, still remembered their effects: The year 1929. The whole capitalist world is enveloped by an economic crisis. Our own country is the hardest hit. The collection of money for relief becomes harder. This is one side of the coin. On the other hand, the economic situation in the Soviet Union improves. But immediately the attacks against the Soviet Union grow stronger, . . . Under such circumstances [our efforts] now changed over to propaganda, to the defense of the Soviet Union.1 Epstein was the national organizer for the Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union (Gezelshaft far Yidishe Kolonizatsye in Sovyetn-Farband), or the ICOR, an American Communist “front” group founded in 1924 to support Jewish agricultural colonization in the new Soviet Union. He was referring to the intensified attacks on the Soviet state as Joseph Stalin consolidated his power and the increased pressure felt by Jewish Communists due to their opposition to Zionism and the building of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Yet the ICOR managed not only to survive but also to thrive during the 1930s. Why did this Communist “front” group not collapse after 1929? The answer, in a word, was Birobidzhan.2 108 > 109 to distinguish the enterprise from Zionist ideology. For the Jewish Communists , whose ideological homeland was the USSR, the creation of a “new” Jew would occur in the Soviet Far East, rather than in Palestine. Birobidzhan would mesh nicely with the subterranean but very powerful secular nationalist sentiments of the Jewish Communist movement.5 The Formation of the ICOR On December 21, 1924, a conference was held in New York City with the participation of 480 delegates representing 24 branches of trade unions, 122 branches of the Workmen’s Circle, 94 landsmanshaftn, 4 Jewish National Workers Alliance branches, 60 Communist Party branches, and 10 cultural organizations. At these meetings, the ICOR, a nonpartisan mass organization, was founded.6 The ICOR’s first secretary was Dr. Elias (Elye) Wattenberg, then a Left Labor Zionist, but he was replaced first by Leon Talmy in 1928 and then by Shlome (Sol) Almazov in 1932; both were members of the Communist Party. Ab. Epstein, a former president of the Workmen’s Circle who had turned to Communism, became the national organizer, and Barnet Brodsky, the treasurer. Among the founding members of the ICOR were Jacob Mordecai Budish, Melech Epstein, Shakhno Epstein, Dr. Joseph Glassman , Abraham Moses Kuntz, Professor Charles Kuntz, Kalmen Marmor , Moissaye (Moshe) Olgin, Ruben Saltzman, and Abraham Victor. Professor Kuntz, a former maskil who had studied at the University of Vienna before coming to the United States, soon became the titular head of the organization. On April 30–May 1, 1925, 122 delegates from thirty-two cities met in New York for the ICOR’s first national convention. The convention ratified an agreement between the ICOR and the KOMERD allowing the ICOR legal rights and privileges in the Soviet Union to buy and supply goods and building materials, to open bank accounts, to make credit available, to bring in supplies from outside the country without paying duty, to allow entrance and exit to and from the USSR by foreign citizens working for the ICOR, and otherwise to provide material help to the Jewish agricultural colonization projects.7 At first, the ICOR insisted that it was a nonpartisan organization not engaged in the “spread of any social or economic ideal or ‘ism.’ Such 110 > 111 Jacob Levin, a member of the national executive, called Birobidzhan “the Jewish new-land.” Something that had been only “a hope for such a long time” was now becoming “realized before our very eyes.” But more than just economic rehabilitation was planned: there was also the ideal of a Jewish cultural revitalization, to strengthen and broaden Jewish culture and to create a new Jewish spirit. This land north of the Amur River, drained by the rivers Bira and Bidzhan, with very few inhabitants , would be suitable for large-scale Jewish colonization. Millions of Jews could settle it, and there would be no...

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