Historical Figure
Lech Wałęsa
b. 1943
President of Poland from 1990 to 1995
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Key Dates
Biography
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. An electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the opposition 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.
Timeline
Polish electrician and politician, 2nd President of Poland, Nobel Prize laureate
September 29 →Lech Wałęsa, a Solidarity leader, is released from a Polish prison after eleven months.
November 12 →Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment near the Soviet border.
November 14 →More from the Interwar & WWII
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