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Lech Wałęsa
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Lech Walesa, wearing a dark suit and red tie, speaks into a microphone at a desk at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Lech Wałęsa leaving a Gdańsk shipyard Lech Wałęsa speaking to workers on strike Lech Wałęsa
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Lech Walesa, wearing a dark suit and red tie, speaks into a microphone at a desk at United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa, 2006.

Lech Wałęsa

president of Poland
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Lech Wałęsa (born September 29, 1943, Popowo, near Włocławek, Poland) is a labor activist who helped form and lead communist Poland’s first independent trade union, Solidarity, from 1980 to 1990. The charismatic leader of millions of Polish workers, he went on to become the first popularly elected president of Poland (1990–95). He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983. The son of a carpenter, Wałęsa received primary and vocational education. In 1967 he began...

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