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Lech Wałęsa

President of Poland from 1990 to 1995

"Wałęsa" redirects here. For other uses, see Wałęsa (disambiguation).

Lech Wałęsa^[a] (Polish pronunciation:[ˈlɛɣvaˈwɛ̃sa]^ⓘ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.

While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist, for which he was persecuted by the government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking

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Lech Walesa was born in Poland in 1943. He worked as a car mechanic, served in the army for two years, and was employed in the Gdansk shipyards as an electrician. In 1970, during the clash between the workers and the government, Walesa was one of the leaders of the shipyard workers.

In 1978, along with other activists, Walesa began to organize free non-communist trade unions and took part in many actions on the seacoast. He was kept under surveillance by the state security service and frequently detained. Then, in August 1980, troubled by the poor treatment of his fellow workers, he led the Gdansk shipyard strike that gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country. In the fight for workers’ rights, Walesa was seen as the leader. The authorities were forced to capitulate—they negotiated the Gdansk Agreement of August 31, 1980, which gave the workers the right to strike and to organize their own independent union.

In the years 1980-81, Walesa traveled to Italy, Japan, Sweden, France, and Switzerland as a guest of the International Labor Organization. And in September

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Lech Walesa

Let’s go back to the beginning. I’d like you to introduce us to Lech Walesa as you were at age ten. Who are you? Where are you living?

Lech Walesa: I live in a village. It’s the year 1952-53. So that means it’s the post-war time. There is a lot of poverty. I am in the third grade of a primary school. I walk five kilometers to go to school, a long way. Then seven kilometers on foot after school to go to church, and that’s every day.

What do your parents hope for you at this point?

Lech Walesa: I believe they really cared about survival until the next day, how to make a living. Perhaps they wondered, “What will he grow into? What kind of a man will he be?” because I was really a very lively child. I really needed to break at least one window every month, and to get into mischief, so they must have wondered.

How many children were there in the family?

Lech Walesa: It was a combined family as I would call it. My father died on returning from the war, and his brother took care of my mother and of my family because my fat