POLAND: Former President Lech Walesa... Profiled.

GUARDIAN/ J.BORGER /

     "Sixteen years after leaving office, Walesa, 67, is still trusting his political instincts and shooting from the hip. You are never quite sure what you are going to hear.
    Poland's most celebrated living son is still in Gdansk, where he rose to fame. But his vantage point over the Baltic port these days is somewhat more elevated than his old worker's flat."
 AND : "Semi-retirement, running a pro-democracy foundation, has not mellowed him. He is as combative and abrupt with journalists as ever."

Lech Walesa Reflects On Poland's 20 Years Of Freedom.

DAILY TELEGRAPH.UK

Lech Walesa reflects on his life's work.
Twenty years ago, Poland became the first country in Eastern Europe since the WW2 to have a non-Communist prime minister, following the victory of Walesa's Solidarity movement in elections.

"My duty was to fight and to conquer and that is what I did," he says. "But the changes could have been better. Think about the scale of what we did here. It would be like you in Britain switching from driving on the left to driving on the right. We have changed from left to right and the cost was tremendous."

Obituary: Polish Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski

From the NYTimes.

Kolakowski rejected Marxism and inspired the Solidarity Movement.