When the Polish communists made this concession, which was without precedent in the history of the communist world since 1917, the new union was christened Solidarnosc (Solidarity). Soon it had 10 million members, and Walesa was its undisputed leader. For 16 months they struggled to find a way to coexist with the communist state, under the constant threat of Soviet invasion. Walesa--known to almost everyone simply as Lech — was foxy, unpredictable, often infuriating, but he had a natural genius for politics, a matchless ability for sensing popular moods, and great powers of swaying a crowd. Again and again, he used these powers for moderation. He jokingly described himself as a "fireman," dousing the flames of popular discontent. In the end, martial law was declared. Walesa was interned for 11 months and then released.

Yet Solidarity would not die, and Walesa remained its symbol. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. With support from the Pope and the U.S., he and his colleagues in the underground leadership of Solidarity kept the flame alight, until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin brought new hope. In 1988 there was another occupation strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, which Walesa again joined — though this time as the grand old man among younger workers. A few months later, the Polish communists entered into negotiations with Solidarity, at the first Round Table of 1989. Walesa and his colleagues secured semifree elections in which Solidarity proceeded to triumph. In August, just nine years after he had climbed over the shipyard wall, Poland got its first non-communist Prime Minister in more than 40 years. Where Poland led, the rest of Central Europe soon followed — and the Soviet Union was not far behind.

The next phase in Walesa's political career was more controversial. Angered by the fact that his former intellectual advisers were now running the country in cooperation with the former communists, he declared a "war at the top" of Solidarity. "I don't want to, but I must," he insisted. Fighting a populist campaign against his own former adviser, he was elected Poland's first noncommunist President, a post he held until 1995. Some people liked his stalwart, outspoken style. Others found him too undignified to be the new democracy's head of state. Brilliant as a people's tribune, he stumbled over long formal speeches. You never felt he was quite comfortable in the role. When he stayed with the British Queen at Windsor Castle, he characteristically quipped that the bed was so big, he couldn't find his wife.

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