Katowickie Forum Partyjne
The Katowice Party Forum

Summary/Abstract: In spring of 1981, conservative forces within the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) sprang to life, articulating a necessity to strengthen the Party ideologically and to engage into a decisive struggle against “Solidarity” Trade Union. One of the main representatives of the conservative fraction was the Katowice Party Forum (KPF). The founding meeting of the Katowice Party Forum was held on 15 May 1981. The Forum was established at the Katowice Regional Committee of the PUWP under a patronage of its first secretary, Andrzej Żabiński. In the first stage of its activities, the Forum consisted of over 100 people who were mostlyactivists of the Polish United Workers’ Party from the Katowice Region, functional activists of the industry trade unions and officers of the Citizens’ Militia (MO) and Secret Police (SB). The executive body of the Katowice Party Forum was the Programming Council consisting of highly positioned functionaries of central and regional echelons of the PUWP. The Council was chaired by a member of the Politburo of the PUWP Central Committee, Gerard Gabryś and a Marxist ideologist, Wsiewołod Wołczew. The main objective identified by the Forum activists was a struggle for keeping the socialist system intact and maintaining the ideologicalline of the communist party. First of all, the KPF members underlined a critical diagnosis of the Party condition, for which they blamed the PUWP Management. As particularly dangerous, the Forum regarded the functioning of linear structures of reformative, grass-roots, internal movement described as revisionist and right-wing. The Forum accused the members of that movement of the will to transform the PUWP into a liberal and social democratic party. The Forum activists were equally critical of the “Solidarity” movement, accusing trade union leaders of exploiting workers and creating counterrevolutionary structures striving for the change of the system. The Katowice Party Forum became soon a subject of a massive criticism by the PUWP activists and was fiercely opposed by the leaders of the Silesian “Solidarity”. Party leaders accused the Forum activists of creating an illegal fraction within the Party and attempts at hindering the process of democratization in the country. Unfavourable attitude of the Party Management led to the Forum losing support of a part of the PUWP activists who, so far, were well disposed towards it, and its initial activity came to a halt. In July 1981, also the delegates to the 9th PUWP Congress negatively assessed the functioning of the KFP. The Katowice Party Forum ceased to exist in September 1981 and then it was transformed into the Katowice Marxist-Leninist Seminar.

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