Lech Wałęsa, a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was born on September 29, 1943. He served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995, becoming the first democratically elected President since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote.
Wałęsa, a shipyard electrician by trade, became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort that ended Communist rule in Poland in 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War.
As a trade-union activist, Wałęsa was persecuted by the government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. However, he continued to fight for democracy and was instrumental in the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government in August 1980.
Wałęsa co-founded the Solidarity trade-union, which grew to have over ten million members. He was arrested again after martial law was imposed and Solidarity was outlawed, but continued his activism and played a key role in the establishment of the Round Table Agreement that led to the semi-free 1989 Polish legislative election.
Wałęsa presided over Poland's transition from Marxist–Leninist state socialism into a free-market capitalist liberal democracy, but his active role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 Polish presidential election. He established the Lech Wałęsa Institute in 1995.
Throughout his life, Wałęsa has received hundreds of prizes, honors, and awards from multiple countries and organizations worldwide. He was named the Time Person of the Year in 1981 and one of Time's 100 most important people of the 20th century in 1999. He has received over forty honorary degrees, including from Harvard University and Columbia University, as well as dozens of the highest state orders.
Wałęsa was born in Popowo, Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Germany (German-occupied Poland) to a carpenter father, Bolesław Wałęsa, who was rounded up and interned in a forced labour camp by the German occupying forces before Lech was born. Bolesław returned home after the war but died two months later from exhaustion and illness. Wałęsa's mother, Feliksa Wałęsa (née Kamieńska),has been credited with shaping her son's beliefs and tenacity.
The Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport has borne his name since 2004, and he has received numerous other honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and the French Grand Cross of Legion of Honour.
