ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
WALESA AND JEFFERSON are vastly different people. But each was vital to his nation's move to democracy.
Former Polish President Lech Walesa is a great guy, but he's no Thomas Jefferson.
That's what the experts will tell you, if not in those exact words.
A Jefferson admirer, Walesa spoke Friday - Jefferson's 253rd birthday - to an invitation-only audience at Poplar Forest, Jefferson's Bedford County retreat.
So what would Jefferson have thought of the man who founded the Polish labor union Solidarity and brought about the end of communism in Poland more than 200 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence?
Well, if our third president happened to be peering down on his former home Friday, he might have had mixed thoughts.
"I don't know what Jefferson might have said about labor unions," said C. William Hill, a Roanoke College political science professor and Jefferson expert who has performed in costume as the statesman. "He wanted us, as long as we could, to remain a nation of freehold farmers - people who owned enough land to be self-sufficient as farmers.
"He hoped for an agrarian republic and only reluctantly endorsed or accepted the idea of the growth of American manufacturing, just as a way to avoid involvement in the affairs of other nations or so we wouldn't be dependent on other nations, England in particular."
Walesa, an electrician from the docks of Gdansk, has no aversion to industry or technology. And where Jefferson might have been more nationalist, Walesa has adopted a warm, friendly approach to international politics and trade.
"Walesa's background is more peasant than worker," said Krzysztof Jasiewicz, a Polish citizen and sociology professor at Washington and Lee University. "Walesa was born in a [rural] village in central Poland. He was in his teens when he moved to Gdansk.
"But I don't believe Walesa today would have any longing for this kind of rustic life. I think he's very much an industrial kind of personality. He's very comfortable living in luxury. I don't think that going back to the manner of a quiet life like Jefferson did in his later life would suit Walesa."
Walesa and Jefferson are not entirely different, said Krzysztof Jasiewicz, a Polish citizen and sociology professor at Washington and Lee University.
But he adds, "The parallel is in a sense historical. I see less of a personality parallel than a political parallel. Jefferson was the founding father of American democracy. Walesa is the foremost and best known of the founders of the new Polish democracy. It's appropriate that the former Polish president speaks to the occasion of Jefferson's birthday."
For the most part, the two men differ greatly. Jefferson was born the son of an upper middle-class surveyor; Walesa was the son of a poor carpenter.
Jefferson was a unitarian and suspicious of organized religion. Walesa is a devout Roman Catholic.
A lawyer, Jefferson studied at the College of William and Mary and had an interest in everything from science to architecture to history.
Walesa has only a grade-school education and vocational training. His political career was launched when he climbed a wall during a 1980 shipyard labor protest and sparked a 17,000-worker strike.
"I don't think I would put Walesa into same category of a Jefferson," said Howard Warshawsky, a professor of political science at Roanoke College who specializes in eastern European politics.
"Two hundred years later, we're still talking about Jefferson. Walesa's always going to be important as the person who brought around the end of the old communist era and the beginning of the post-Communist period, but beyond that, I'm not sure he will be remembered in the same way."
"Let me put it this way," Jasiewicz said. "I see Jefferson as a very prominent intellectual. Walesa's not intellectual; he's a man of action. But he has a political instinct which sometimes leads him to very good solutions of political crises and problems."
Their leadership styles and political gifts also differ greatly, Hill said. "I have read enough to know that Walesa does not suffer dissenters easily and he can be pretty autocratic in his approach to things, and nobody ever accused Jefferson of that.''
However, Hill said, "Walesa was clearly a man of the people. Jefferson was a product of the Virginia aristocracy who sympathized with the people. I don't think he would have been surprised by the emergence of somebody like Walesa.
"I think [Jefferson] thought the spirit of liberty would eventually make itself known. You can try to suppress it, but it's something that will eventually find enough light and enough air to make itself known. I don't think Jefferson would have been surprised that this would have come from the common folk, even though he himself was not of that stock."
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. Lech Walesa, formerby CNBpresident of Poland, speaks Friday at Poplar Forest, Thomas
Jefferson's retreat in Bedford County. color.