Some here recalled the widespread disappointment felt last year when Walesa, who many had anticipated would win the Nobel Prize then, was passed over.

"It left a sense that the world had given up on Poland," a Polish writer said. "This year, when the mood is even worse and the national depression greater, the award means even more to people psychologically."

Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a math lecturer at Warsaw University who served as Solidarity's national spokesman, remarked: "The prize is a shot in the arm for the whole country. This was something that everybody needed."

By donating the $190,000 in prize money, moreover, to a foundation proposed by Poland's Roman Catholic Church to channel western agricultural assistance to farmers here, Walesa is seen as having boosted prospects for the innovative scheme.

Government and church officials are still in delicate negotiations over the fund, which would be the first of its kind in the Soviet Bloc. The church is insisting that the money raised from western governments and private sources, expected to total $2 billion over five years, go to buy farm machinery and fertilizer that would be funneled directly to the private farmers who till about three-quarters of Poland's arable land. But the state wants the recipients widened to include government-owned machinery and chemical industries.

Announcement of the award comes also at a time of debate among Solidarity activists about the future strategy of the opposition movement in Poland. Recent remarks by Walesa have pointed to a change in tactics, away from the street protests that have marked major anniversaries since martial law was imposed in December 1981, and toward a long-term campaign aimed at developing extensive underground political, educational and publishing networks. Today's Nobel would appear to bolster Walesa's advocacy of a nonviolent resistance effort.

The unionist reiterated today his appeal for talks with the authorities. Leaning out of a window of his second-floor, six-bedroom apartment in a Gdansk housing district, he told a crowd of supporters below: "I think that those who rule will understand that a dialogue is necessary and we should meet at the negotiating table."