GDANSK, Poland — In January 1989, as a college student, I came here to march with Solidarity, the movement that helped bring about the peaceful collapse of Soviet communism. Now, more than three decades later, I have brought my children to Gdansk to learn about communism and meet the man who successfully fought it: Lech Walesa.

Of the giants who brought down the Iron Curtain — among them Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, Vaclav Havel — only Walesa is still with us. At 79, he still looks as vigorous as the young electrician who led a workers’ uprising against the “dictatorship of the proletariat”; forced Poland’s Marxist regime to recognize the first independent trade union in the communist world; was imprisoned under martial law only to later force his former jailers at the negotiating table to allow free elections; and who, as the first president of the newly free Poland, anchored his former Warsaw Pact country in the institutions of the West.

Sitting in his office at the European Solidarity Center, the museum built on the grounds of the old Lenin Shipyard where Solidarity was born, I asked about polls showing that half of young Americans have a positive view of socialism.

What is his message for young people who have no living memory of communism? “Many young people are actually fooled to accept communism as an idea,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “There are beautiful sentences talking about equality, about justice. … But as soon as you start putting that system into practice, all sorts of serious disasters come about. But young people quite often don’t know it. We have experience (with socialism), so we really know something about it. So, I strongly recommend rejecting it.”

But, he continued, “you have to understand why (young people) are looking to the past. They’re going to the past because there are no clear answers, ideas for the future.” As a result, he said, “populist demagogues are leading the world, because it’s easier. But those who potentially have better solutions than demagogues and populists have to wake up.”

What does he, as the president who forced Russian troops to leave Polish soil, think as he watches Russian troops attack Ukraine? “I know very well how it might be looking if Poland had not succeeded in joining NATO in time. Then definitely Russia would be invading Poland, not Ukraine,” he said. “I’m doing my best to help Ukraine now because, in a way, they are fighting instead of us.”

Walesa greatly admires Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Both Zelenskyy and me, we are not politicians; we are practical people, and that’s why we tend to succeed,” he said.

But Walesa worries what will come next for the comedian-turned-statesman. “Up until now, Zelenskyy is doing great,” he said, “but the real problem starts at the moment when you have to turn toward peaceful solutions. Whether he will be able to find that peaceful solution. As a practical man, I see many dangers in that stage of development. But I wish him all the best.”

The West’s strategy for challenging Russian imperialism is insufficient, Walesa said.

“Of course, as long as they are shooting at us, we have to use tanks at the moment. But much more effort should be concentrated on the propaganda war,” he said. “Solidarity gave an example of how we should be fighting. We were not even using a bow and arrow, let alone tanks, and we destroyed the Soviet Union. We have to fight in a political way, with propaganda, like Solidarity — radio stations, televisions, press. We should reach every single Russian on Earth, and we should convince them … ‘Your country should not be giving so much power to a dictator like (Vladimir) Putin. … We are not against you as Russians. You are perishing in the fight, and we are perishing in the fight, and there’s no point in this.’ ”

Asked about his central role in communism’s collapse, he was humble. “Up to the moment of the election of Pope John Paul II, I was organizing people to fight the communists. Over 20 years, I was able to organize just 10 people. And among those 10 … I had two (secret police) agents. But when … John Paul II became the pope, out of the blue I had 10 million people.”

When the pope came to Poland in 1979, Walesa said, even members of the secret police attended the pope’s Masses and gatherings with the Polish people.

“We knew many of them, we were looking at them. We learned that they were not real communists; they were radishes — red on the outside and white inside. So, we stopped being afraid of them.”

“Without the pope,” he said, “communism would have lasted much longer. … The Holy Father actually (sped) up the process of the collapse of communism … (and) played an important role in making that last moment of communism bloodless and nonviolent.”

How does Walesa want to be remembered? “I don’t care so much about it, I have done the best I could, whatever was possible for me to do,” he said. “I gave all I could, and I was doing it in an honest and simple way without any manipulation.”

He then turned to my children, ages 17, 20 and 21: “That’s why I really care that your generation succeeds, because only your success will somehow guarantee my success, the success of Solidarity. … If you succeed, people will praise me. If you don’t succeed, they might curse me! So, my heritage, in a way, depends on your success.” Walesa and Solidarity gave my children and their generation the gift of a world growing in freedom, prosperity and peace; now it is in their hands to seize or squander that inheritance.