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statements from 1981 on, a strategy and tactic was formulated, on the basis of which the RAF and its section of the anti-imperialist movement would in the future take a position concerning the national and international class struggle that was completely different from the one held in the 1970s. The May Paper is the programmatic document for this new line, and with regard to the important anti-imperialist questions, it constitutes a break with the historical continuity associated with the RAF’s name. 10
    The AIK’s critique was twofold. First, by reorienting itself toward the radical left in West Germany, the RAF was no longer operating within the framework of Third World revolution. Second, by adopting an anti-NATO focus and mentioning the Soviet bloc alongside the national liberation movements as factors opposing imperialism, the RAF was adopting a pro-Soviet position. (The AIK, like many Maoist groups, held to a staunchly anti-Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism; its chief criticism of the peace movement, for instance, was its alleged close ties to the “social imperialist” Eastern Bloc. That such views had never been shared by the RAF, either before or after the Stammheim deaths, was well known in the support scene, making these accusations of “betrayal” all the more disingenuous.) 11
    While the vehemence of the AIK’s charge does not seem obviously justified by the document itself, there is the intriguing coincidence that at the time the May Paper was being written, the RAF was indeed receiving aid from the GDR. What’s more, during the period that the May Paper was being implemented, the idea did gain currency in anti-imp circles that that the Soviet Union was being threatened with NATO’s new first strike missiles, and that this was what prevented it from intervening to counter imperialism’s attacks on the Third World liberation movements. 12
    This was anathema to AIK, which saw the Soviet Union as a major threat to the Third World in its own right:
    [T]he Soviet Union presents its own hegemonic aspirations as a struggle against U.S. imperialism and as the “strategy of world revolution” for the people in the countries lying between them—through bloody or bloodless neocolonialism in the Third World and with political and military pressure in the Second World… For the peoples of the world, the Soviet Union is an enemy that is as dangerous as U.S. imperialism…
    In the May Paper, the RAF makes this “world revolution” strategy into the anti-imperialist line for the FRG, and as such becomes a direct agent for Soviet hegemonic aspirations and, as such, a section of the social imperialist united front, which intends to conduct its conflict with U.S. imperialism on the backs of the peoples of the world.
    And finally, the May Paper,
    provides a chauvinist ideological basis for a new “anti-imperialism” that focuses on “resolving” the class struggle by developing a white socialism in the FRG, which achieves a fraternal accommodation with social imperialism, because it corresponds to the latter’s social base. 13
    While the AIK was always a tiny group even by the standards of the far left, and its magazine was never widely read, its critique of the May Paper became a reference point for a goodly number of older RAF supporters who rejected the guerilla’s new strategy. Even if one did not agree with the AIK—even if one had not read the actual article in question—many of its arguments against the May Paper seemed on point. Within the broader radical left, this critique was of marginal importance (if it was even noticed at all!), the various criticisms from the
Autonomen
clearly speaking for far more people. However, within the ranks of the RAF’s traditional supporters, the kind of criticisms made by the AIK gave form to many people’s unease and provided a way to step away from the project while retaining