Lech Wałęsa

Biography

Lech Wałęsa was a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995. He became a trade-union activist at the Lenin Shipyard, where he was persecuted by the government, and led a successful pro-democratic effort that ended Communist rule in Poland in 1989. Wałęsa co-founded the Solidarity movement, whose membership rose to over ten million, and was instrumental in establishing the country's transition to a free-market capitalist liberal democracy.