Portal:Poland/Selected biography/13
Lech Wałęsa (born 1943) is a Polish trade-union and human-rights activist and politician. Soon after beginning to work as an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, he became involved in trade union movement. For this he was persecuted by the Polish communist government, fired, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in negotiating the Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government, and co-founded Solidarity, the first trade union in the Soviet Bloc that was independent from the state. He was interned after martial law was imposed and Solidarity was outlawed in 1981, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. Upon release he participated in the 1989 Round Table talks that led to a semi-free parliamentary election and to a Solidarity-led government. He went on to become the first popularly elected president of Poland in 1990. As head of state, he presided over Poland's transformation from a communist to a democratic and market-oriented state, but his domestic popularity waned. His role in Polish politics diminished after he lost the 1995 presidential election. (Full article...)