Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa was an electrician at the Gdańsk shipyard, fired in June 1976 for his union activity and detained several times in the years that followed. In 1980 he led the strikes that produced Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. On 13 December 1981 General Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Wałęsa was arrested. He was held for eleven months, until 14 November 1982, and Solidarity was outlawed in October 1982.

He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 but did not collect it, fearing he would not be allowed back into Poland. He was elected President of Poland in December 1990 and served until 1995. His record is not spotless in everyone's eyes: historians have argued that he worked as a security service informant codenamed Bolek in the 1970s. A lustration court cleared him in 2000 for lack of evidence, documents surfaced in 2016 that include a signed pledge to cooperate dated 1970, and a 2018 court case against him was dismissed. Historians still debate how far he went and how long it lasted.