Lech Wałęsa (b. 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. Wałęsa became the first democratically elected President of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish President elected by popular vote.
A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement, and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist and co-founded the Solidarity trade union, whose membership rose to over ten million. He was persecuted by the government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdansk Agreement between striking workers and the government. As leader of Solidarity his fight for democracy ended Communist rule in 1989 in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
