The Struggle and the Triumph: An Autobiography

The former Polish electrician tells of his rise from the Gdansk shipyard to the presidency, chronicles the history of Solidarity, and explains how he thinks Poland should react to the changing political climate.

In this speechifying autobiography, Poland's president delivers a dramatic and self-dramatizing account of the rise of the Solidarity movement, his role in the labor strikes of 1988, his battle with the Polish Communist party and his election to the presidency. Interspersing transcripts, Walesa presents a witty, Kafkaesque replay of government wiretapping and judicial harassment of him through 1986, and vividly re-creates the news-making kidnap and murder of the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984. He credits Solidarity's survival as due in large measure to the moral support of the Roman Catholic Church. In down-to-earth prose, the former electrician writes about his father's internment in a Nazi concentration camp, his own religious faith, and the joys of family life and of raising eight children. But in denying the existence of "racially based" anti-Semitism in Poland, past or present, he ignores history. Glaringly short on specifics about his plans for Poland's future, his self-portrait is padded with accounts of a blur of meetings, talks and travel, as well as encounters with Elie Wiesel, George Bush, Elton John, Pope John Paul II and Francois Mitterrand, among others. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Not a full-fledged life but, rather, the last decade or so in the on-going adventures of the portly, apple-cheeked forklift- repairman and Nobel Prize laureate who triggered the collapse of the Communist empire. Walesa opens in 1984, a year of despair: Solidarity has been outlawed; passivity rules; Poland is in the clutches of ``vulgar and dim-witted apparatchiks.'' Seven years later, Walesa would be elected president of his nation. According to Walesa, the key player during this turnabout was not himself but Pope John Paul II, under whose spiritual leadership ``Europe recovered its identity, becoming a continent of free countries.'' Emotions surge during the Pope's three visits to Poland, each ``as necessary as the sun,'' rallying a brutalized people to renew their struggle for freedom and justice. Mostly, though, we get the struggles of the Walesa clan: Lech, in and out of prison, hunting for a new house, quitting tobacco; wife Danka, ``my guiding light,'' battling the police, shooing reporters from the kitchen; six children coming of age during the rebirth of a nation. Signs of revolution are everywhere, and not the least of them are visits by world celebrities-- Thatcher, Bush, Elton John--to the humble Walesa household in Gdansk to support the cause. Finally, the state edifice cracks and free elections are held in 1989. Much detail is offered about internal political squabbles that hold little interest for Americans. On the other hand, Walesa confronts squarely the problem of Polish anti-Semitism and comes off as a real mensch. Whether describing his triumphant speech to Congress, his devotion to the Virgin Mary, or his fear that his sons may emigrate to Western Europe or America, he sounds just like what he is: a working-class hero, salt-of-the earth. As satisfying as a platter of kielbasi and pierogi--and without all the fat. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Walesa, leader of Poland's Solidarity labor movement, here continues his autobiography from 1983 to his election to the Polish presidency in 1990. As in the previous work, A Way of Hope ( LJ 1/88. o.p.), Walesa does not provide a context to understand events but instead presents his philosophy and major life influences. From his power base in Solidarity, Walesa portrays his maturing role as a national and international leader and his commitment to nonviolence to achieve political and economic reform. Walesa characterizes Poland's struggle as the precursor of reform in other Eastern European nations in the wake of Soviet change. This autobiography belongs in most collections.
- Rena Fowler, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.