The man who “broke the Soviet bear’s teeth”

Dubai: Born into a working class family in Popowo, Poland, and detained several times due to his constant rejection of Communist rule, Lech Walesa managed to topple the Soviet Union’s rule and become Poland’s first democratically elected president in 1990.

Over the years, the devout Roman Catholic and father-of-eight has been accused of collaborating with the communist-era secret police, but Walesa has always denied the accusations and won a number of court cases.

In 2008, the 780-page work, The Secret Police and Lech Walesa, by Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, claimed to have uncovered evidence which they say proves that in the 1970s, before the Solidarity trade union was founded, Walesa collaborated with Communist officials under the code name “Bolek”. Both historians base their book on information gathered from the IPN archive (Institute of National Remembrance), which contains around 86 kilometres of secret police files covering most of Poland’s Communist era.

But Walesa, who resigned from Solidarity in 2006, dismissed the accusations in the book as a “fairy tale”. He said he believed communist officials falsified his secret police file after he became Solidarity’s leader, as part of a campaign to discredit him.

The Nobel laureate established a non-profit and non-governmental institute, the Lech Walesa Institute, in 1995. As the first such institution in Poland it aimed to promote a positive image of the country and the Poles abroad and to support the democracy process in society.

In 1990, Walesa published an autobiography, A Way of Hope, which gives first-hand accounts of his leadership qualities and the hardships and struggle he went through, especially after martial law was imposed in 1981.

Apart from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, the former Polish president has been granted many honorary degrees from universities, including Harvard University and the University of Paris. Other honours include the Medal of Freedom (Philadelphia, US); the Award of Free World (Norway); and the European Award of Human Rights.

Walesa was named “Man of the Year” by The Financial Times in 1980, by The Observer in 1980, and by Time magazine in 1981. He is also listed on the Time 100 list of the most influential people of the last 100 years.

Walesa is no longer active in Polish political life, yet he remains a highly influential figure in Polish public life and lectures around the world on Central European history and politics.

The Polish leader also has his unique ideas. He has been quoted as saying: “I’m lazy. But it’s the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn’t like walking or carrying things.”

— The writer is an intern at Gulf News