The world is on the threshold of "The Era of the Earth," according to the Polish Solidarity leader and ex-president Lech Walesa, who addressed a capacity crowd in Spaulding Auditorium yesterday.
"I am glad that the Communist era is all over," Walesa said. "But when we were in it, I imagined that its end would bring a new era of security for all of us. Little did I know that the end of Communism would bring a new era of new threats and issues."
Walesa, a Nobel laureate and Montgomery Fellow in residence, emerged from the famous 1980 workers' strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk as the charismatic leader of Solidarity, a labor union that became the first political party to oppose Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe.
When the Polish Communists made the concession of free association in trade unions in 1980, Walesa found himself at the helm of a growing 10 million member movement. A decade later, he was Poland's first democratically elected president. He now heads the Lech Walesa Institute which aims to advance the ideals of democracy throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the world.
In his speech, "Democracy, The Never-ending Battle," Walesa demonstrated the quick wit and animated presence that rallied millions of Poles during the 1980s and 1990s.
"I must admit that, on such a beautiful day, I am surprised to see so many people attend a talk with a politician," he began his lecture with the help of a translator. "Don't you people like the sun?"
He then addressed the significance of the end of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, which has ushered in a new economic and political order.
"In what I like to call 'The Era of the Earth,' the old goals are inverted. The old goal was to keep our neighbors as poor and weak as possible to prevent them from attacking us. We raised borders to prevent passage between countries," he said.
Walesa consistently urged the younger members of the audience to affect productive change as the world moves toward freedom, democratic institutions and free market economic practices.
"I am confident that the new generation, with the support of a good education, particularly here in the United States, which is still the superpower of the world, will take the leadership of the world, but at the same time make other countries solve their own problems," he said.
"Often times, when I am giving these talks, I wonder why the people I am talking to are not all presidents and world leaders," he continued, "but the truth is that they just don't want to be. You must want to take leadership roles."
He quickly moved away from that serious note: "You must want to make change, unless you want things to go to hell, where Lenin and Stalin are pretty high up down there, and they were not too keen on Americans."
The crowd laughed again when Walesa described Communist Cuba as "a mosquito on the nose of the United States. I have my suspicions that you just keep it around as a sort of 'Jurassic Park of Communism.'"
When asked if he foresees an imminent end to Fidel Castro's dictatorial rule, he replied, "he could shoot himself, but then again, he would need courage to do that."
When asked his opinion of current Russian President Vladimir Putin, Walesa answered, "he has been coping pretty well, so I drink to his health. I understand that he has been drinking to his own health less, but I am sure that his friend Boris Yeltsin has been drinking for him."
On a more serious note, Walesa said, "it is in all of our best interests to have a powerful and stable Russia, because it is a huge country of great resources, as long as it is democratic and with a free market economy, and as long as it does not hold onto its hegemonistic ways of thinking."
He compared democratization to "taking an aquarium of fish, making fish soup out of it, and then trying to get the aquarium back."
Walesa also talked about the possibility of what he called a "New Generation Marshall Plan," and said that past efforts to extend monetary aid to formerly Communist countries have failed due to lack of planning.
Many members of the crowd seemed uncomfortable, however, with his proposal that "democracy needs to be redefined for the 21st century." He complained of "the current situation where people do not vote or join political parties, and then wait until things get really bad, and then take to the streets and riot."
He acknowledged that any effort to reconsider the orthodox concept of "one man, one vote," is "a ticklish matter." He proposed a type of priority system of voting based on education and political activity, but said that the practical application of a redefinition of democracy "is for your generation to figure out."
"Democracy should grant rights, but must impose responsibilities at the same time," he said. "On the one hand, you have schools like this that produce an education unlike any other in the world, and then you have the majority of people who think that freedom means sipping beer and running naked in the jungle."
