Former president of Poland Lech Walesa casts his ballot at a polling station in Gdansk during the second round of Poland's presidential elections on June 1.MATEUSZ SLODKOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Lech Walesa is fixed in the popular imagination as a Cold War hero: the mustachioed electrician who won the Nobel Peace Prize, led Poland out of communism and went on to become its first democratically elected president in decades.
Today, as Mr. Walesa approaches his 82nd birthday, his iconic mustache has turned white and his left arm rests in a sling as he recovers from shoulder surgery. But despite his advancing age – or, perhaps, because of it – Mr. Walesa isn’t slowing down. He’s plagued by a sense of urgency, a need to do what he can to help preserve democracy, before it’s too late.
Ahead of a North American speaking tour that will include stops in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, Mr. Walesa sat down with The Globe and Mail last month for a wide-ranging interview to discuss the decline of democracy, the rise of populism and what could finally put an end to the war in Ukraine.
“People don’t believe in democracy. They don’t defend democracy,” he said, seated at a long wooden table in his office on the second floor of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk. On the wall to his left hung images of da Vinci’s The Last Supper and John Paul II, the late Polish pope who had been a strong proponent of Polish independence.
“And why did this happen? Because we’ve developed the media, television, the internet and so on,” said the former president.
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In recent years, social media has polarized people and fuelled the spread of misinformation, which has eroded public trust in institutions and in democracy.
“Even if there were a prophet today with the best ideas, people wouldn’t listen to him because we don’t trust each other,” Mr. Walesa said.
Negative public perceptions of politics and politicians have meanwhile deterred many smart, capable people from running for office, according to Mr. Walesa. While there are a handful of good politicians, many of those who end up in power are “the dregs,” he said.
“That’s why things are as they are,” he said, adding: “When will we wake up? When will successful and talented people get involved? Who will oppose demagoguery and populism, because it’s here again, winning, today.”
Mr. Walesa has retained the fashion sensibilities of his blue-collar background: He is dressed, quite literally, in a light-blue collared shirt decorated with an image of Mary (he’s a devout Catholic) and a Ukrainian flag pin, his black pants held up by suspenders.
Changing the course of future events could be as simple as taking a page from the history books, he contends. The Solidarity movement that Mr. Walesa became the public face of in the 1980s defeated communism not through violence but with ideas. Polish dissidents bucked censorship laws to sway public opinion and unite Poles across class lines behind a common cause: a free, independent Poland.
“Solidarity developed its own methods of fighting, which is why we won,” Mr. Walesa said. Those same techniques are needed today, he added.
Poland's Solidarity movement, which Mr. Walesa became the public face of in the 1980s, defeated communism with ideas instead of violence, he says.WOJTEK MAREK DRUSZCZ/Getty Images
Mr. Walesa’s rise to prominence from his humble upbringing in Popowo, a village in the north-central part of Poland, is chronicled in his 1987 autobiography, A Way of Hope.
His ancestor Mateusz came to Poland some time near the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century with a considerable fortune, which he’d most likely amassed in France. But Mr. Walesa’s grandfather gambled away his family’s wealth and sold off most of their land, plunging them into poverty.
Mr. Walesa, the son of a carpenter, left home in 1959 to attend a vocational school in the nearby town of Lipno. In 1967, upon arriving in Gdansk, a city on Poland’s Baltic Coast, he started working as an electrician at what was then called the Lenin Shipyard.
It wasn’t long after his arrival that he met his future wife, Danuta. He’d been passing by a flower stand when he became captivated by the mischievous brown eyes of the woman working there. He asked her out a few days later, and within months they were married.
Mr. Walesa believes changing the course of future events could be as simple as taking a page from the history books.MAREK DRUSZCZ/Getty Images
In December, 1970, several weeks after the birth of the couple’s first of eight children, demonstrations broke out at the shipyard, as well as other workplaces in the region, in response to the state’s decision to hike food prices. Mr. Walesa’s natural propensity for galvanizing a crowd thrust him into a leadership role. The strikes were unsuccessful, however; police and the military were called in to quash them, and dozens of protesters were shot and killed.
Mr. Walesa was eventually dismissed from the yard for his anti-establishment activities, including taking part in efforts to commemorate the victims of the 1970 strikes. In 1980, when another occupation strike broke out at the Gdansk shipyard, Mr. Walesa, who had been banned from the site, had to scale a wall to join the action. He became the group’s ringleader and successfully negotiated a number of concessions from the government, including, most crucially, the creation of an independent free trade union known as Solidarnosc, or Solidarity.
Things took a turn for the worse in December, 1981, when martial law was declared. Overnight, tanks and soldiers appeared in Poland’s streets, communication lines were cut, and leaders of the Solidarity trade union were arrested. Mr. Walesa was interned for almost a year.
Mr. Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, but his wife Danuta collected the prize on his behalf as he feared he would be barred from re-entering Poland if he left.-/Getty Images
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his role in the “non-violent struggle for free trade unions and human rights in Poland,“ but, fearing he would be barred from re-entering Poland if he left, had his wife collect the prize on his behalf. By that point, he had become an international celebrity; then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan hailed the decision to award him the Nobel as a ”triumph of moral force over brute force."
Finally, in 1989, during a period of growing social unrest and amid yet another series of strikes, the Polish government entered into round-table negotiations with Solidarity. Mr. Walesa and his colleagues managed to secure the country’s first semi-free elections, in which the trade union was hugely successful.
The following year, Mr. Walesa ran for the newly established office of Polish president on the slogan “I don’t want to, but I have to.” He won handily and oversaw a difficult period of economic transformation for the country. But his presidency was controversial and he was defeated after one term – long enough, though, to see the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
British historian Timothy Garton Ash described Mr. Walesa in Time magazine as “someone who was magnificent in the struggle for freedom but less so in more normal times.” However, “no one can deny him his place in history.”
The former Solidarity trade union movement leader was handily elected as Polish president in 1990 and oversaw a difficult period of economic transformation.JANEK SKARZYNSKI/Getty Images
Today, the European Solidarity Centre, a museum and library devoted to Solidarity’s history, is housed in a massive building next to the shipyard where the workers’ movement has its roots. Its red-brown walls are meant to evoke the rusted hulls of ships.
“In its day, Solidarity set an example of how to fight and win,” said Mr. Walesa, who was joined during the interview by his eldest son, Bogdan.
Mr. Walesa believes that some of Solidarity’s tactics could be employed to end the war in Ukraine. The key to defeating Russia, he suggests, lies not in armed combat but in speaking directly to Russians about the consequences of the invasion.
“Even if we help Ukraine beat Russia, Russia will recover in 10 to 20 years, and our grandchildren will have to fight Russia,” Mr. Walesa said.
Instead, he suggests creating – and widely publicizing – a list of all the Russians who have perished in the war.
The toll of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a closely guarded state secret, but various sources estimate that more than a million Russians have been killed or wounded. Generous payouts and an extensive propaganda campaign have kept many grieving relatives onside, according to The Guardian.
“The entire problem is that it’s not about Putin, it’s not about Stalin. It is the political system that causes this banditry,” Mr. Walesa said, adding, “We must help Russia change its system.”
Unsurprisingly, the Nobel laureate isn’t a proponent of Germany’s approach. Since the war began, the European Union’s largest economy has significantly boosted its defence spending, an investment that Mr. Walesa calls “pointless” and “a bad idea.” There are already enough weapons in existence to destroy the world “10 times over,” he said. “Why the hell make it 11?”
Mr. Walesa believes some of his former trade union’s tactics could be employed to end the war in Ukraine.Czarek Sokolowski/The Associated Press
Ultimately, he believes that the key to solving many of society’s problems lies in overhauling democracies, not just in Poland but around the world.
“We have a democracy that was good for the times of Churchill,” he said. “It was okay, but for a different time.”
He suggests two-term limits of no longer than five years each, full transparency around campaign financing and the option to recall any elected official by collecting more signatures than the number of votes that elected them in the first place. “If you do all that, in 10 to 20 years’ time, people will return to democracy,” he said.
At stake is nothing less than the survival of civilization.
“The question is whether we will do something,” he said.
Interview translated by Piotr Luba