An Exclusive Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Lech Wałęsa (Part 3 of 3)

In an exclusive interview, Leader of Tomorrow Grégoire Roos talks to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa about Wałęsa’s own struggle for freedom, the current contestations of liberal democracy across the globe, and his vision for the future of Europe.

The interview was conducted in early 2020, before the COVID-19 crisis, in Gdansk, Poland. This is part three of the interview. You can find part one here and part two here.

Grégoire Roos: In your memoirs, published ten years ago, you talk of your childhood. You say that your hardworking childhood made you stronger (you walked miles barefoot to school in order not to bare out your leather shoes, which your mother had bought by the sweat of her brow; you worked hard in the family farm, and even occasionally for neighbours in need…). I was born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and like most of my generation I enjoyed a comfort and a freedom that you couldn’t even possibly imagine when you were my age. I know you’re an optimist, passionate about new technologies (I should stress here that you manage your Facebook and Instagram accounts yourself with your tablet!) and very close to the young, but do you think that the comfort and carefreeness the new generations have enjoyed have had a bad impact on politics?

Lech Wałęsa: I couldn’t say it’s been particularly bad. The new generations are simply different. I may sound like repeating myself, but you have to locate everything in time and space. Your generation will need to find its own solutions to its own problems. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying it’s not my business. I’m just saying it would be stupid and useless to tell the younger generation that they are helpless, that they don’t understand anything to what’s going on in the world, and that the problems of the coming world are no longer mine. No, yesterday was not necessarily better than today. And I believe in the dialogue of generations, in the mutual support between generations.

It’s like Europe: you won’t achieve anything if you do everything in your own little corner. The burden weighing on your generation’s shoulders is not that light either you know. You’re confronted with imperatives that were unknown to my generation: unemployment, cancer, HIV/AIDS, global warming, terrorism, crisis of Europe, the need to go on and on studying for years before finding a decent job… and, perhaps the toughest of all: speed. You have no more time to do anything. That’s perhaps the greatest challenge the younger generations are facing and will be increasingly facing. Each generation has its own challenges. I like to repeat that God gives you such a cross that you are able to carry. It’s up to each of us to find the strength to bear it. My cross was that of the post-WW2 communist world, with the threat of a nuclear cataclysm. You have the cross of globalisation, with the ghost of artificial intelligence.

Roos: One detail in your memoirs keeps striking me. You say that you’ve never really liked history. But how can we lead a people and try to tackle the great challenges of the time if we don’t take an interest in history? You said that leadership was inseparable from consciousness. But if you think about it, what is history if not the conscience of the peoples?

Wałęsa: Well I have a different approach to history. If you travel in Poland, you’ll see that some of the country’s greatest heroes are those who killed the most Germans. Same if you travel to Russia. If we decided to stop fighting wars and to make peace, it’s surely not to entertain this memory of killing and bloodshed. Our great-grandchildren may not want to renovate all the statues of these heroes. And that’s perhaps better. We’re going away from the era of wars, and moving towards that of globalised peace. I think we are currently witnessing this kind of movement in the US. It might take an excessively violent form here and there, but I feel the substance is legitimate.

Roos: Don’t you confuse history with the past or memory here? History is not just about statues and who killed more neighbours. It’s about something greater. It’s our common DNA beyond our age, gender, religion, skin colour or political affiliation. Churchill used to say that all political solutions (and we’ve been talking about solutions since we started this discussion) were to be found in history books.

Wałęsa: I’m thinking about Churchill in a different way… Churchill betrayed Poland my dear! He gave us to the Soviets. But perhaps it is because he was so wise and farsighted, and that he knew from the very beginning that Poles would destroy communism! Poles and no one else [laugh]!

Roos: Shortly before his election, Pope Benedict XVI denounced a “dictatorship of relativism”, which, according to him, was corroding our societies and preventing them from distinguishing between good and evil. Getting back to the question of history (for you haven’t really answered it), is there any identifiable link between the relative crisis of culture, this tendency of forgetfulness of the younger generation, and, on the other hand, the fact that this generation no longer seems to have any interest in politics and elections? People like father Jerzy Popiełuszko [a Polish priest active in factories, who died of torture at the hands of thugs of the communist regime], a symbol of the fight of the Polish people for freedom, died so that others could live free. I know you are an optimist, but let’s be realistic: is this relativism and erosion of culture and knowledge not a problem?

Wałęsa: I will disappoint you but no, it is not a problem. What you seem to suggest is that it is mostly because the young have less culture and knowledge of history (which is perhaps true) that they no longer vote. I can’t agree with you. I believe that the real reason behind the young’s low turnout in the polls is that they feel they’re not properly understood and represented by political parties. And here we get back to what we discussed earlier on regarding the need for better representativeness of society’s social structure in political parties. Voting is the demonstration of an interest, of a trust. Why would you have an interest in what doesn’t show you any attention? Why would you trust those who seem not to care for you? Do you think the voters are mere philanthropists? Do you think they’re stupid? No, of course they’re not! The young do not vote and it’s the best wake-up call we could imagine to lead parties to reinvent and reorganise themselves.

Roos: Let’s come back to your memoirs. Talking of the communist government, you say: “they didn’t want a fox, they wanted a lion”. But you actually turned out to be a fox, to the great despair of the communist regime. You’ve just said that each time calls for its own solutions. What would the current world require then? More foxes, or more lions?

Wałęsa: It’s a good question. I would be tempted to say that our world asks for both: foxes and lions. But, you know, the situation in the 1980s was very special, just like my enemy. The Government wanted to fool us, lead us to unleash our anger and turn it into violence. Back then, roaring (as we’re talking of lion) could mean ending up in jail. So we had to turn into foxes, moving quickly and in silence. In wars of attrition, foxes are stronger than lions. Today we need more arguments, more debate, more intellectualism in the political approach. But we also need more energy in the determination for change…

Roos: In other words, more thinking lions?

Wałęsa: Yes, exactly. But it should be a lion that would be ready to share the catch. Not sure everyone is ready for that…

Roos: In this discussion, I’ve often heard you mention God. Reflecting upon the causes of the 1917 Revolution and the rise of the USSR, Russian writer and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote that everything had happened because, in the end, “men had forgotten God”. In our modern societies, as we mentioned earlier, we no longer found politics on God (taken in the sense of a transcendence, not of a religion). So on what do we found a narrative for leadership if God has disappeared?

Wałęsa: Well I wouldn’t say God has entirely disappeared. Things are just all mixed-up. I would say that we’ve incorporated God in our fight against rivalry. Let’s put it another way: we need God for our after-life. But politics is not about what comes after death (and which is still uncertain…), but about now, about the current, about the present. Many rules that encourage and promote order and justice are actually stemming from godly principles.

And after all, you’ve referred to two popes in your previous questions, which means that men of God can still be relevant references in a political discussion. Religions are still used around the world for evil purposes, we shouldn’t forget it. That is also why the very notion of God is taken very cautiously in the political debate of Western societies. It has brought about too many divisions. You are right, however, that we must make the distinction between God and religion, for God is needed, but in a spiritual – not religious – way.

Roos: Reflecting upon your marriage, your wife once commented: “it is impossible to see clear in him. For everything that happened, this mystery was crucial, otherwise he would never have survived.” What is the place of loneliness and mystery in leadership?

Wałęsa: To be honest with you, I haven’t been able to see through myself either [laugh]! I’m discovering myself every day. But to answer your question with the same honesty, I can but say that there is no answer. You can only pretend to answer. I think each human reaction in front of a crisis is unique, and that some people are more reserved and discreet than others.

I believe we are also a product of a childhood, of an education. It is therefore difficult to tell you: yes, you need to be mysterious to be a good leader. We could say nonetheless that you need enough inner depth to dive into yourself when the events ask you to take tough decisions, or that the enemy wants to isolate you. Learning to get on well with yourself is important. You are your best companion.

Roos: What is your definition of courage?

Wałęsa: Oh but you’ve kept the toughest question for the end! Again, this can only be a personal answer. What I think is that you should feel the moment when you should act, trust your instinct (whence the need to know yourself). Courage is being able to take a decision when everyone around you is shouting, paralysed and unable to act. It’s not about being unflappable, for we are all humans, we are all weak and mortals. I think it is about managing to move by drawing from the depths of your being this extra breath of harmony everyone else around you is lacking. And, last but not least: remain true to yourself, to your creeds and beliefs, however tempting it may sometimes be to disown them.

Lech Wałęsa is a Polish Statesman, an electrician turned trade union, human rights and democracy activist, and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who served as the first democratically-elected President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. As leader of the “Solidarity” movement, he played a fundamental role in the Roundtable Talks between the workers and Poland’s communist government, which resulted in the first semi-free elections in a Warsaw-Pact country in 1989 and the end of the communist rule in Poland. A year later, in December 1990, Lech Wałęsa was elected President of Poland, and led his country’s transition from communism to a free-market liberal democracy which later joined NATO (1999) and the EU (2004).