Lech Wałęsa

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Lech Wałęsa
President of Poland
In office December 22, 1990 – December 23, 1995
Preceded by	Wojciech Jaruzelski
Succeeded by	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Born	September 29, 1943 Popowo, Poland
Political party	none (see Solidarity for details)
Spouse	Danuta Wałęsa
Profession	Electrician, shipyard worker

Lech Wałęsa ([lɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa] (help·info); in English often ['lɛk və'lɛsə]; born September 29, 1943, Popowo, Poland) is a Polish politician, a former trade union and human rights activist, and also a former electrician. He co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995 (succeeded by Aleksander Kwaśniewski).

[edit] Biography

Lech Wałęsa was born on September 29, 1943 in Popowo, Poland, to a carpenter and his wife. He attended primary and vocational school, before entering Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk (Stocznia Gdańska im. Lenina, now Stocznia Gdańska) as an electrical technician in 1967. In 1969 he married Danuta Gołoś, and the couple now has eight children.

[edit] Solidarity

He was a member of the illegal strike committee in Gdańsk Shipyard in 1970. After the bloody end of the strike, resulting in over 80 workers killed by the riot police, Wałęsa was arrested and convicted of "anti-social behaviour" and spent one year in prison.

In 1976, Wałęsa lost his job in Gdańsk Shipyard for collecting signatures for a petition to build a memorial for the killed workers. Since he was on an informal blacklist, he could not find another job and was supported, for a time, by friends.

In 1978, together with Andrzej Gwiazda and Aleksander Hall, he organized the illegal underground Free Trade Union of Pomerania (Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża). He was arrested several times in 1979 for organizing an "anti-state" organization, but not found guilty in court and released at the beginning of 1980, after which he re-entered the Gdańsk shipyard.

On August 14, 1980, after the beginning of an occupational strike in the Lenin Shipyard of Gdańsk, Wałęsa illegally scaled the wall of the Shipyard and became the leader of this strike. The strike was spontaneously followed by similar strikes across Poland. Several days later, he stopped workers who wanted to leave Gdańsk Shipyard, and persuaded them to organize the Strike Coordination Committee (Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy) to lead and support the naturally occurring general strike in Poland.

In September of that year, the Communist government signed an agreement with the Strike Coordination Committee to allow legal organization, but not actual free trade unions. The Strike Coordination Committee legalized itself into National Coordination Committee of Solidarność Free Trade Union, and Wałęsa was chosen as a chairman of this Committee.

Wałęsa kept this position until December 11, 1981, when he was arrested. General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared a state of martial law on December 13. Wałęsa was interned for 11 months in south-eastern Poland near the Soviet border until November 14, 1982.

Wałęsa's importance is clearly shown by the international recognition he received. He was featured in many international media: here he is depicted on the cover of TIME magazine, January 4, 1982.

In 1983, he applied to come back to Gdańsk Shipyard to his former position as a simple electrician. While formally treated as a "simple worker", he was practically under house arrest until 1987. 1983 also saw Wałęsa being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was unable to receive the prize himself, fearing that the government would not let him back in. His wife, Danuta Wałęsowa, received the prize in his place. Wałęsa donated the prize money to the Solidarity movement's temporary headquarters, exiled in Brussels.

From 1987 to 1990 Wałęsa organized and led the "half-illegal" Temporary Executive Committee of Solidarity Trade Union. In 1988 Wałęsa organized an occupational strike in Gdańsk Shipyard, demanding only the re-legalisation of the Solidarity Trade Union. After eighty days the government agreed to enter into round-table talks in September. Wałęsa was an informal leader of the "non-governmental" side during the talks. During the talks the government signed an agreement to re-establish the Solidarity Trade Union and to organize "half-free" elections to Polish parliament.

Round-table negotiations

In 1989, Wałęsa organized and led the Citizenship Committee of the Chairman of Solidarity Trade Union. Formally, it was just an advisory body, but, practically, it was a kind of a political party, which won parliament elections in 1989 (Opposition took all seats in the Sejm that were subject of free elections and all but one seats in the newly re-established senate; according to the Round Table agreements only members of the Communist Party and its allies could stand for the remaining 64% of seats in Sejm).

While technically just a Chairman of Solidarity Trade Union at the time, Wałęsa played a key role in Polish politics. At the end of 1989, he persuaded leaders from formally communist ally parties to form a non-communist coalition government, which was the first non-communist government in the Soviet Bloc's sphere of influence. After that agreement, to the big surprise of the Communist Party, the parliament chose Tadeusz Mazowiecki for prime minister of Poland. Poland, while still a communist country in theory, started to change its economy to a semi-capitalist system.

[edit] Tax evasion

Warner Bros. gave Lech Wałęsa $1,000,000 for the rights to a biopic of him in 1989. According to the tax law of the time in Poland, the money should have been heavily taxed (800,000 złotych, as claimed later by the local NRS). However, Wałęsa never declared the income. The case was an issue as late as the 1995 presidential election. To avoid taxation, Wałęsa claimed that the amount was a free donation from the movie company and not income. The investigation ended in 1997, when the head tax court, NSA, decided that the case had expired in 1994. [1]

[edit] Presidency and afterwards

On December 9, 1990, Wałęsa won the presidential election to become president of Poland for the next five years. During his presidency, he started a so-called "war at the top" which practically meant changing the government annually. His style of presidency was strongly criticized by most of the political parties, and he lost most of the initial public support by the end of 1995.

Wałęsa paying his respects to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan as he lies in state

Wałęsa lost the 1995 presidential election. After that, he claimed to go to "political retirement", but he was still active, trying to establish his own political party. In 1997 Wałęsa supported and helped to organize a new party called "Solidarity Electoral Action" (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność) which won the parliamentary elections. However, his support was of minor significance and Wałęsa held a very low position in this party. The real leader of the party and its main organizer was a new Solidarity Trade Union leader, Marian Krzaklewski.

Wałęsa again stood for the presidential election in 2000, but he received only 1% of votes. Many Polish people were dissatisfied with the fact that once again he wanted to regain his political power. After that, Wałęsa again claimed his political retirement. From that time on, he has been lecturing on the history and politics of Central Europe at various foreign universities.

Wałęsa and Aleksander Kwaśniewski shaking hands at the funeral of Pope John Paul II; Tadeusz Mazowiecki in the middle

In May 10, 2004, the Gdańsk international airport has been officially renamed to Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport to commemorate the famous Gdańsk citizen. His signature has been incorporated into the airport's logo. There was some controversy as to whether the name should be spelled Lech Walesa (without diacritics, but better recognizable in the world) or Lech Wałęsa (with Polish letters, but difficult to write and pronounce for foreigners). A month later, Wałęsa went to the U.S., representing Poland at the state funeral of Ronald Reagan.

In 2006, Wałęsa quit Solidarity. In an Associated Press report, he cited differences with the party's support of the Law and Justice party, and the rise to power of Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński.

Wikinews has news related to:

Lech Walesa quits Solidarity

[edit] Online activities

Wałęsa continues to appear in the media, being often asked to comment on current events. Of late, he also declared he is interested in information technology, and likes to use new developments in that field. He claimed to have put together a few computers on his own to find out how they work, and declared he takes a smartphone, a palmtop and a laptop with him when travelling. [2] At the beginning of 2006, he revealed that he is a registered user of the Polish instant messaging service Gadu-Gadu, and was granted a special user number by the service provider - 1980. His previous number was 5606334, and was made public on the website of the Lech Wałęsa Institute. [3] Later that year, he also declared he uses Skype, where his handle is lwprezydent2006. It was reported that he uses it extensively, also because he sees it a measure of saving money, claiming that his wife spends more than he earns anyway [4].

[edit] Honors

Apart from his Nobel Prize, Wałęsa received several other international prizes. He has been awarded honorary degrees from several United States and European Universities.

• Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav (1995)
• Knight of the Danish Order of the Elephant
• Knight of the Swedish order of the Seraphim

[edit] Trivia

• Wałęsa plays himself in Andrzej Wajda's 1981 fictional film about Solidarity, Man of Iron.
• He frequently is available at Skype under nickname lwprezydent2006.
• Although not politically engaged anymore, Wałęsa is still publicly addressed as President.
• In the late 1990s he was offered $1,000,000 to shave his trademark moustache in a Gillette commercial, but he refused. A couple of years later though, to a big public surprise, Wałęsa did shave his moustache for a brief period 'just for fun'.
• On November 10, 2006, Wałęsa was the keynote speaker at the launch of the "International Human Solidarity Day" proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 at the United Nations Trusteeship Council. The Day, to be observed on 20 December, aims to raise awareness of the importance of solidarity for advancing the international development agenda, especially for poverty eradication. In the Millennium Declaration, Heads of State and Government identified solidarity as one of the “fundamental values… essential to international relations”. Mr. Wałęsa received a long applause from the audience after delivering an emotional speech on the impact of the day in human relationships and how his own movement "Solidarność" succeeded in getting support from people from various countries.

[edit] See also

• Solidarity
• History of Poland
• Gdańsk
• Bezpartyjny Blok Wspierania Reform (BBWR)
• Cold War

[edit] References

"The Shaming of Lech Walesa: Why the defeater of communism finds himself defeated by ex-communists--and why he and the American public haven't noticed" by Agnieszka Tennant. Books & Culture magazine; September 1, 2002. http://www.ctlibrary.com/bc/2002/sepoct/15.30.html

[edit] Quotations

• "We lived through some absolutely hopeless situations in history."
• "I had conversations with all the powerful people of the world: with presidents, with prime ministers, chancellors and kings, too. None of them believed that there was any chance of us toppling communism before the year 2000. I didn't meet a single person among those people who would believe that was possible. Not a single one in the whole world."

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Lech Wałęsa

• CNN Cold War—Profile of Lech Walesa
• Lech Walesa Biography info
• The Nobel Peace Prize 1983
• Wałęsa speech - mp3
• Lech Walesa – Nobel Lecture
• Wałęsa speech (after signing the agreement with the Strike Coordination Committee to allow legal organization in August 1980)
• BBC interview with Lech Walesa on the 20th anniversary of the founding of Solidarity
• (Polish) Independent movie about Walesa
• (Polish) Plusy dodatnie plusy ujemne Google video
• Lech Walesa Institute
• Lech Walesa's booking agent page