Lech walesa biography
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A Way of Hope: An Autobiography
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Lech Walesa
Lets go back to the beginning. Id like you to introduce us to Lech Walesa as you were at age ten. Who are you? Where are you living?
Lech Walesa: I live in a village. Its the year So that means its the post-war time. There is a lot of poverty. I am in the third grade of a primary school. I walk five kilometers to go to school, a long way. Then seven kilometers on foot after school to go to church, and thats every day.
What do your parents hope for you at this point?
Lech Walesa: I believe they really cared about survival until the next day, how to make a living. Perhaps they wondered, What will he grow into? What kind of a man will he be? because I was really a very lively child. I really needed to break at least one window every month, and to get into mischief, so they must have wondered.
How many children were there in the family?
Lech Walesa: It was a combined family as I would call it. My father died on returning from the war, and his
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Lech Wałęsa
President of Poland from to
"Wałęsa" redirects here. For other uses, see Wałęsa (disambiguation).
Lech Wałęsa[a] (Polish pronunciation:[ˈlɛɣvaˈwɛ̃sa]ⓘ; born 29 September ) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between and After winning the election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 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 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, for which he was persecuted by the government, placed under surveillance, fired in , and arrested several times. In August , he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to