POLITICIAN

Lech Wałęsa

1943 - Today

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Lech Wałęsa (; Polish: [ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa] ; born 29 September 1943) 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. 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 1976, and arrested several times. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Lech Wałęsa is the 217th most popular politician (down from 170th in 2019), the 9th most popular biography from Poland and the most popular Polish Politician.

Lech Wałęsa is most famous for being the leader of Solidarity, a Polish trade union that played a major role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

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Among POLITICIANS

Among politicians, Lech Wałęsa ranks 217 out of 19,576. Before him are Sejong the Great, Francis I of France, Xi Jinping, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, Haakon VII of Norway, and Sun Yat-sen. After him are Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, Mehmed III, Joanna of Castile, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Nixon.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1943, Lech Wałęsa ranks 4. Before him are Janis Joplin, John Major, and Robert De Niro. After him are Jim Morrison, Julio Iglesias, Catherine Deneuve, Bobby Fischer, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Betty Williams, George Harrison, and Vangelis.

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In Poland

Among people born in Poland, Lech Wałęsa ranks 9 out of 1,694. Before him are Pope John Paul II (1920), Frédéric Chopin (1810), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788), Catherine the Great (1729), Rosa Luxemburg (1871), and Albert A. Michelson (1852). After him are Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906), L. L. Zamenhof (1859), Paul von Hindenburg (1847), David Ben-Gurion (1886), Günter Grass (1927), and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744).

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Among POLITICIANS In Poland

Among politicians born in Poland, Lech Wałęsa ranks 1. After him are Paul von Hindenburg (1847), David Ben-Gurion (1886), Lech Kaczyński (1949), Władysław IV Vasa (1595), Sigismund II Augustus (1520), Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923), Vladislaus II of Hungary (1456), Casimir III the Great (1310), Donald Tusk (1957), Sigismund I the Old (1467), and Władysław III of Poland (1424).

Polish born Politicians

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