Kaczyński, Lech

Related Category: Polish History: Biographies

(lĕkh kächĭn´skē), 1949–, Polish politician, grad. Warsaw Univ., Gdańsk Univ. (Ph.D., 1976). He and his identical twin, Jarosław, first gained public attention as child movie actors. Both were active in the prodemocracy movement of the 1970s and were members of Solidarity. A longtime advisor to Lech Wałęsa, Lech Kaczyński served in the Polish senate (1989–91) and 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 (2002), with his brother, of the conservative Law and Justice party, he was elected president of Poland in 2005, campaigning on a socially conservative platform.