Background
Lech Wałęsa was born on September 29, 1943, in the village of Popowo, located between Warsaw and Gdansk in Poland. He is the son of Bolesław Wałęsa, a private farmer and carpenter and Feliksa Wałęsa (née Kamieńska).
1969
Gdansk, Poland
A wedding portrait of Polish politician and trade-union organizer Lech Walesa his wife, Miroslawa Danuta Golos.
1975
Poland
Polish politician and trade-union organizer Lech Walesa with his wife, Danuta, and their sons (left to right) Przemyslaw, Bogdan, and Slawomir, on a beach.
1980
Na Ostrowiu 15/20, 80-873 Gdańsk, Poland
Wałęsa during the strike at the Lenin Shipyard.
1980
Wałęsa signs autographs during the strike.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Leader of the "Solidarity" trade union Lech Walesa with children in the kitchen of his old flat at Wrzosy Street.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
View of Polish trade-unionist (and later President) Lech Walesa at Solidarity headquarters.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Lech Walesa speaks during a Gdansk shipyards strike. Walesa served as President of Poland from 1990 - 1995 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Polish trade-unionist (and later President) Lech Walesa talks on the telephone in his office at Solidarity headquarters.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Polish trade-unionist (and later President) Lech Walesa (left) and his bodyguard, Henryk Mazul (1923 - 1995), walk out the doorway as they leave Solidarity headquarters.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Agreement signature of Gdansk, Poland In August, 1980-From Left to Right: Mieczyslaw Jagielski , representative of the government and Lech Walesa.
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Lech Walesa with family at home
1980
Gdansk, Poland
Leader of the "Solidarity" trade union Lech Walesa in front of the shipyard gate after signing the Gdansk Agreements
1981
Vatican
Leader of the "Solidarity" trade union Lech Walesa and his wife Danuta on the audience with pope John Paul II.
1981
Vatican
Leader of the "Solidarity" trade union Lech Walesa and his wife Danuta on audience with pope John Paul II.
1981
Gdansk, Poland
Leader of the "Solidarity" trade union Lech Walesa at the First National Congress of Delegates of "Solidarity".
1983
Poland
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa is hailed by workers at the Gdansk shipyard after it was announced he had won the Nobel prize.
1983
Lech received the Nobel Prize for Peace.
1988
Poland
A group of Nobel Prize winners visited the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp to participate in informal celebrations of the 43rd anniversary of the camp's liberation. The visit also served as a gesture of support for Lech Walesa who was banned by the Polish authorities from participating in a Nobel Prize winners' conference in Paris. Pictured: Lech Walesa, Elie Wiesel. Former German Nazi death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
1989
President Bush meets privately with Wałęsa.
1990
Poznan, Poland
Polish politician Lech Walesa (center) speaking during his presidential election campaign.
1991
London, England
Queen Elizabeth II and Former Polish President Lech Walesa attend his State Banquet given in honor of the Queen.
1991
Vatican City, Vatican
Pope John Paul II meets President of Poland Lech Walesa at his private library in the Apostolic Palace.
1993
Gdansk, Poland
Lech Walesa with his wife and children leaving for holiday.
1994
Vatican City, Vatican
Pope John Paul II meets Lech Walesa and his wife Danuta Golos Walesa at his private library in the Apostolic Palace.
1995
Polish politician Lech Walesa (centre) casts his vote in the Polish presidential election. With him is his wife Danuta (foreground, left). Walesa won the vote and served as President.
2000
Vatican
Pope John Paul II greets Walesa at the Vatican in St. Peter's Square.
2008
Danuta Walesa and her husband Lech attend a ceremony in 2008 marking 25 years since he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
2009
Berlin, Germany
Former Polish President Walesa and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attending the 10th world summit of Nobel peace prize Laureates.
2009
Lech Walesa
2011
Wałęsa receiving the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
2013
Sculpture of Wałęsa by Giennadij Jerszow, created by sculptor Gennady Ershov.
2013
Warsaw, Poland
Premiere of Walesa. Man of Hope.
2013
Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, 30126 Lido VE, Italy
Lech Walesa attends the 'Walesa: Man Of Hope' Premiere during the 70th Venice International Film Festival at the Palazzo del Cinema.
2014
Berlin, Germany
Polish Solidarity (Solidarnosc) Leader Lech Walesa attends celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.
2015
Wałęsa speaks on VIII European Economic Forum.
2015
Krakowskie Przedmieście 48/50, 00-071 Warszawa, Poland
Walesa attends the Solidarity Awards Gala at the Presidential Palace.
2017
Cannes, France
Former Polish President Lech Walesa (R) and guest attend the "The Meyerowitz Stories" screening during the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals.
United Kingdom
Lech received the Order of the Bath.
Germany
Lech received the Order of Merit.
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
France
Lech received the Legion of Honour.
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa at strike
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
Lech Walesa
Poland
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Poland
Lech Walesa
Signature Lech Wałęsa-Bolek on the collaboration agreement with SB from the Kiszczak archives.
ul. Juliusza Słowackiego 200, 80-298 Gdańsk, Poland
Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport
Małopolska 47, 71-899 Szczecin, Poland
Shooting of Walesa. Man of Hope on the Solidarity Square.
Lech Walesa and Mirosława Danuta Gołoś.
Lech Walesa with General Jaruzelski.
Lech Walesa and Mirosława Danuta Gołoś.
Lech and Jaruzelski
Lech Walesa and Mirosława Danuta Gołoś.
Gdansk, Poland
Strike leader Lech Walesa speaking to his supporters at the Lenin shipyard gate.
(The Nobel Prize-winning Polish Solidarity leader's memoir...)
The Nobel Prize-winning Polish Solidarity leader's memoirs vividly recount harsh farm life in Eastern Poland, oppressed working conditions in the Baltic port of Gdansk, and the hard-won achievements of the Solidarity trade union movements.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805006680/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(In this speechifying autobiography, Poland's president de...)
In this speechifying autobiography, Poland's president delivers a dramatic and self-dramatizing account of the rise of the Solidarity movement, his role in the labor strikes of 1988, his battle with the Polish Communist party and his election to the presidency. Interspersing transcripts, Walesa presents a witty, Kafkaesque replay of government wiretapping and judicial harassment of him through 1986, and vividly re-creates the news-making kidnap and murder of the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559702214/?tag=2022091-20
1992
electrician politician Labour activist
Lech Wałęsa was born on September 29, 1943, in the village of Popowo, located between Warsaw and Gdansk in Poland. He is the son of Bolesław Wałęsa, a private farmer and carpenter and Feliksa Wałęsa (née Kamieńska).
Lech graduated from primary and vocational school in nearby Chalin and Lipno as a qualified electrician in 1961.
Lech worked as a car mechanic from 1961 to 1965, and then embarked on his two-year obligatory military service before beginning work on 12 July 1967 as an electrician at Lenin Shipyard (now called Gdańsk Shipyard) in Gdańsk.
From early in his career, Wałęsa was interested in workers' concerns. In December 1970, as food shortages and drastic increases in food prices precipitated violent protest strikes in shipyards along the Baltic coast, Walesa was elected chair of the Strike Committee at the Lenin Shipyard. There, on January 15, 1971, he was among those who negotiated workers' demands with First Secretary of the Communist Party Edward Gierek.
Dismissed from his job at the shipyard, he found work in May 1976 at a construction machinery enterprise. During the fall of 1976 Walesa made contact with the Workers' Defense Committee, renamed Committee for Social Self-Defense. Walesa and union activists in Gdansk drew up a Charter of Workers' Rights on April 29, 1978, and formed the unofficial Baltic Committee of Independent Trade Unions to defend the workers' economic, legal, and human rights. Although involved in the underground trade union movement, Walesa continued to work with the government-controlled, official trade unions. Elected delegate to the official union's elections, he protested against flagrant election manipulation and in December 1978 was fired from his job.
Later Walesa began work at the engineering enterprise Elektromontaz, where he earned recognition as an outstanding electrician. He urged the formation of independent trade unions and social self-defense groups to assist workers. After numerous arrests were made, Walesa defended his coworkers who were to be discharged in January 1980 for taking part in the rally. He, too, lost his job at Elektromontaz.
Over a ten-year period, Walesa was held under 48-hour arrest with great regularity. After the government covertly attempted to increase meat product prices in July 1980, triggering numerous strikes, Walesa, unemployed, scaled the 12-foot-high perimeter fence of the Lenin Shipyard on August 14, 1980, and took charge of the shipyard strike. With 21 demands in hand and his commission of experts, Walesa entered into negotiations with Deputy Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Jagielski on August 23 and, after a week of hard negotiations, won the government's acceptance of independent autonomous trade unions and the right to strike. On August 31, 1980, he signed the final phase of the Gdansk Agreement and ended the strike.
Walesa was elected chair of the highest decision-making body of the new national union, the National Coordinating Commission of the Independent Autonomous Trade Union "Solidarity." From September to November 1980 Walesa utilized the "strike" mechanism effectively to counter a series of confrontations designed by the authorities to weaken and destroy Solidarity. In mid-January 1981 Walesa led a delegation to Rome where he was received by Pope John Paul II and met with Italian trade union leaders.
By August 1981 talks between Walesa and government negotiator Mieczyslaw Rakowski collapsed as Solidarity, with ten million members, prepared for its first national congress. Walesa and Solidarity came under fire from fierce propaganda attacks while Soviet military and naval maneuvers increased fears of an invasion. With strikes and protests continuing unabated, Walesa declared a three-month strike moratorium on November 4, 1981, and met at an unprecedented summit with Archbishop Jozef Glemp and Party First Secretary General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who offered plans for a Council for National Agreement.
Walesa called the presidium and regional chairmen into closed session in Radom, where he issued a statement on the government's refusal to conclude a genuine national agreement. On December 7, 1981, a secretly obtained, edited tape of the meeting was broadcast by Warsaw Radio, implicating Walesa in confrontation with the authorities and the Solidarity militants in the overthrow of the government. In a massive, predawn, secretive military crackdown, Walesa and nearly all of Solidarity's leadership were arrested and interned on December 13, 1981, and martial law was imposed. Flown to Warsaw for talks with General Wojciech Jaruzelski, he refused to negotiate or televise an appeal for calm and, while in custody in Warsaw, smuggled messages to Solidarity advocating peaceful resistance.
Transferred to the Arlamow hunting reserve in southeast Poland, Walesa continued in his refusal to cooperate with the authorities. Solidarity was delegalized in October 1982 by the Party-dominated and controlled Sejm. Walesa was released on November 11, 1982, after 11 months of internment. After receiving permission to return to the Lenin Shipyard in April 1983, he resumed work at his own request in August 1983, ten days after martial law was lifted.
On August 30, 1985, the fifth anniversary of the Independent Autonomous Trade Union in Gdansk, Walesa appealed once again to the authorities to resume talks and to seek an agreement. He offered positive proposals in a document, "Poland Five Years after the August," compiled by Solidarity activists, which would serve as a basis for dialogue and which would bring about the hoped-for peaceful solution to workers' problems in Poland.
When it was announced that Poland would be able to freely choose its government, Walesa began promoting a new presidential election, and when it was apparent that he had public support, he announced his intention for candidacy. In 1990 he was elected president of Poland. Although the country suffered a deadlocked government and high unemployment rate during Walesa's term, he accomplished much. Walesa pushed hard for reforms, and devoted a great deal of energy to ensuring Poland's entry to the European Union. He was responsible for ending Polish ties to Russia and even received a declaration from Russian president Boris Yeltsin that stated Russia's lack of objection to Poland's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
After losing the 1995 election, Wałęsa announced he would return to work as an electrician at the Gdańsk Shipyard. Soon afterwards he changed his mind and chose to travel around the world on a lecture circuit. In 1995 he founded the Lech Wałęsa Institute, a think tank with a mission to popularize the achievements of Polish Solidarity. Walesa is also the author of several books.
(In this speechifying autobiography, Poland's president de...)
1992(The Nobel Prize-winning Polish Solidarity leader's memoir...)
1990Wałęsa is a devout Roman Catholic.
From 1993 to 1997 Wałęsa joined Nonpartisan Bloc for Support of Reforms, from 1997 to 2001 he supported Solidarity Electoral Action. He joined Christian Democracy of the 3rd Polish Republic in 1997. From 2001 he has supported Civic Platform.
Wałęsa is a staunch opponent of abortion. In 1993 during his presidency he signed a law restricting abortions in Poland. This law reversed the virtually free access to abortion that existed since 1956 and limited its use to cases in which the woman's life is in danger, pregnancy has resulted from rape or incest, or the fetus is irreparably damaged.
Wałęsa is well known for his anti-gay position. In 2013 he said on Polish television that homosexual people have no right to a prominent role in politics. Despite sharp international criticism and a legal complaint of "propaganda of hate against a sexual minority", Wałęsa refused to apologize for his comments. At a political rally in 2000, he described gay people as "sick" and said, "I believe those people need medical treatment". During the drawing up of a new Polish Constitution in 1995, President Wałęsa argued against the inclusion of gay rights provisions.
On 8 November 1969, Wałęsa married Mirosława Danuta Gołoś, who worked at a flower shop near the Lenin Shipyard. The couple has eight children.