The old two-story building in Zienola Brama, the Old City, where Lech Walesa has his office, overlooks a canal that flows out to the edge of the Baltic Sea. From the window of his office, Walesa has an unrestricted view of Gdansk—with its tall church spires of the renaissance period that dot the city and old winding roads that lead to the harbor. Walesa need not turn his eyes away to ponder on the history of his homeland.

Walesa himself is