Lech Wałęsa

By gently pushing the gates of reform, he unleashed a democratic flood that deluged the Soviet universe and washed away the Cold War.

Lech Walesa.

Ronald Reagan.

1998, who are our heroes? Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul, Martin Luther King, Ho Chi Minh.

first, and studying the Cold War, how the Cold War ended.

And I focused on the main figures, what I call the Cold War Big Seven, all right? Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel.

So if you guys are taking notes, right? So those were the figures, and I became really focused on this question of how did the Cold War end, and most important of all, what was Ronald Reagan's role? And for that, I interviewed everybody alive that I could find.

I spent many, many, many, many days at the Reagan Library.

to our Cold War Conversations.

So this shipbuilding engineering program, as part of that, you happen to be in August 1980 in the same shipyard that Lech Walesa is in at the time that Solidarity, the Polish free trade union, is founded.

Can you describe the shipyard, what it was like to be there and what you hear on what happens?

So I remember we started the shipbuilding practicum before the first year of school began in October.

That's Sunday, October 4th.

The annual Cold War Week at the National Cold War Center in Blytheville in East Arkansas this fall will feature former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa.

Walesa will be in conversation with novelist and Arkansas native John Grisham Friday, November 6th in Blytheville.

The weekend will also include the unveiling of the Cold War Center's Berlin Wall Collection, expected to be the largest public viewable collection of authentic Berlin Wall segments outside of Berlin.

Gdansk.

And people may remember, like, Walesa was from, am I getting that name right? Yes, was from Gdansk, part of the Solidarity Movement that, you know, that brought forth a new Poland.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Now, I'll tell you who really inspires me very deeply.

Lech Wałęsa of Poland inspires me to this day because it seems like in everything that I've ever studied, it seems like that he looked at his world right there in Poland, and when someone said, "This is wrong.

This is wrong.

This is wrong.

Where would the United States be today without those heroes who stood up boldly and demanded reform? Many lost their lives.

Was it worth it? The fall of European communism in the early 1990s, starting with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, and desperate East Germans who wanted to see the Berlin Wall come down, and Czechs who protested in Wenceslas Square.

Was that worth it? The Boston Tea Party in 1773.

Of course, the list goes on.

As far as European communism went, the winds of change really began to blow in the 1980s.

In Poland, the Solidarity Movement, led by Lech Wałęsa, called for a series of strikes which crippled that country's economy.

In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Romania, governments came under pressure to roll back the oppressive restrictions of communism.

In previous times, the Soviet Union's response would have been swift and severe.

East Germans celebrated, and that falling domino set off a chain reaction that led to the dissolution of communism in Eastern Europe.

And by the time the dust had settled, the Soviet Union was no more.

But the story many people haven't heard is how the fall of communism had less to do with Lech Wałęsa and protest, and more to do with prayer.

In 1982, in the city of Leipzig, a Protestant pastor named Christian Fuhrer began holding Monday evening prayer meetings in his church, St. Nicholas Church.

That means that the people could protest from their homes by not showing up to work in public service.

That's something we did in the 1980s during the solidarity movement with Lech Walesa to help bring down the Soviet Union.

We have to make a decision.

The president has to make a decision.