"Those who gave us this prize understand that we want to change the situation in Poland peacefully," he shouted. "Neither prizes nor prison will push me off the road I've been following."

For Walesa, who turned 40 last week, the award caps a remarkable rise to international prominence that began in August 1980 when he jumped the fence of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk to join striking workers. Long known along the Baltic coast for his efforts to found free trade unions--a campaign that cost him his job at the shipyard in 1976 and led to repeated run-ins with police--Walesa quickly took command of the shipyard strike and skillfully negotiated what had seemed impossible in a Communist country: the right to establish an independent trade union with the right to strike.

With his walrus mustache and jaunty air of defiance, Walesa assumed leadership of what rapidly evolved into a national trade union movement that rivaled Poland's Communist leadership. His canny political abilities were tested not only by the Communists in negotiations on union demands but also in heated struggles with other union activists who sought to push the organization into dangerous confrontation with the ruling party.

Since his release last November from 11 months of martial-law internment, Walesa has followed a dual strategy, criticizing the government for not allowing a more open new trade union structure while seeking the resumption of talks with Communist officials.

Authorities have rebuffed the overtures, contending that Walesa is now just a private citizen. But they have tacitly acknowledged his continued prominence by harassing him with brief detentions and by conducting a relentless media campaign against him. The press attacks have accused him of enriching himself as Solidarity's chairman and have suggested he is now a tool of anti-Polish American interests.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Lech Walesa, with his parish priest, the Rev. Henryk Jankowski, talks to newsmen in his Gdansk apartment after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. AP