Kaczynski, Lech Aleksander

Kaczyński, Lech Aleksander

(lĕkh ä'lĕksän`dĕr kächĭn`skē), 1949–2010, Polish politician, grad. Warsaw Univ. (1971), Gdańsk Univ. (Ph.D., 1979). He and his identical twin, Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński (yärô`släf), 1949–, Ph.D. Warsaw Univ., first gained public attention as child movie actors. Both were active in the prodemocracy movement of the 1970s, were members of SolidaritySolidarity,
Polish independent trade union federation formed in Sept., 1980. Led by Lech Wałęsa, it grew rapidly in size and political power and soon posed a threat to Poland's Communist government by its sponsorship of labor strikes and other forms of public protest.
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, and served as advisers to Lech WałęsaWałęsa, Lech
, 1943–, Polish labor and political leader. He worked as an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk but was dismissed in 1976 for his antigovernment protests.
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. Lech Kaczyński served in the Polish senate (1989–91) and Sejm (lower house of parliament; 1991–93). Subsequently, he was head of the supreme auditing board (1992–95), justice minister (2000–2001), and mayor of Warsaw (2002–5). A founder (2001), with his brother, of the conservative Law and Justice party and its first chairman (2001–3), he was elected president of Poland in 2005, campaigning on a socially conservative platform. He was killed in a plane crash in Smolensk, Russia. Jarosław served (1991–93, 1997–2005) in the Sejm and was minister of state (1990–92) during Wałęsa's presidency. In 2003 he succeeded his brother as chairman of the Law and Justice party, and served as prime minister from 2006–7. After his brother's death, he was an unsuccessful candidate to succeed him. In the 2015 elections, though Beata SzydłoSzydło, Beata Maria,
1963–, Polish political leader, grad. Jagiellonian Univ., 1989. A member of the conservative Law and Justice party, she was first elected to the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, in 1995.
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 publicly led the party's successful campaign, he remained party leader and was the power behind the new government; he also engineered Mateusz MorawieckiMorawiecki, Mateusz Jakub,
1968–, Polish economist, banker, and political leader, b. Wrocław, grad. Univ. of Wroclaw, 1992, Wrocław Univ. of Science and Technology, 1993, M.B.A. Wrocław Univ. of Economics, 1995.
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's replacement of Szydło as prime minister in 2017.