New ‘Marshall Plan’ Needed, Walesa Says : East Bloc: Solidarity’s founder is wildly cheered at a joint session of Congress. He says economic aid is vital.

Greeted by tumultuous cheers from a crowded joint session of Congress, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa on Wednesday called on America to offer a new “Marshall Plan” to help rebuild the ailing economies of Eastern Europe.

The Marshall Plan “helped Western Europe to protect its freedom and peaceful order” by supplying $11 billion to rebuild European economies after the end of World War II, Walesa recalled. “And now it is the moment when Eastern Europe awaits an investment of this kind.”

For the United States, he declared, such an investment is “better than tanks, warships and warplanes, an investment leading to greater security.”

With the skill of a master politician, Walesa adapted himself to his forums as he toured the nation’s capital. Before the joint session, filled with members of Congress, the diplomatic corps, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Cabinet, he was the statesman, bringing tears to the eyes of taciturn senior congressmen as he recounted the saga of Poland’s oppression and rebirth.

Afterward, lunching with members of the Senate leadership, he was the humble electrician from Gdansk. “If the lights here go out, I can fix them for you,” he joked to Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas.

And just a few hours after that, answering questions from journalists and East European experts at a meeting of the Board for International Broadcasting, which oversees Radio Free Europe, he displayed yet another face--witty observer of the international scene. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, he said, is “a juggler who’s throwing a hundred balls at the same time. For the time being, he’s catching all of them. But how long?”

Asked about unrest within the Soviet Union, Walesa said: “The big country we have in mind has a chance to survive only as a federation based on healthy principles.”

But, he added, “There’s no point in pulling the bear by his mustache. Better to tickle him.”

Poland, the first Soviet Bloc nation to have a non-Communist government, still faces many hurdles before establishing a viable, market-based economy, he said. The country, he said, “threw out Stalin and is kicking Lenin, but Marx is still in power.”

In a city that normally ignores visiting foreign dignitaries, Walesa drew rare crowds at every stop, as tourists and government officials alike stood in lines hoping for a chance to snap a picture of the portly, mustachioed figure who has become an international symbol of Eastern Europe’s democratic struggle.

Walesa’s appearance before the joint session marked only the third time in history that a foreigner who was not a government leader at the time has addressed Congress. A Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, spoke to a joint session in 1824. Winston Churchill, who led Britain through World War II, gave a similar address after leaving office.

From his first moments at the podium of the House, where he turned to the crowd and raised his arms in a V-for-victory wave, Walesa was greeted with cheers and standing ovations that 24 times interrupted his 45-minute speech, delivered through a translator. Congressional staff members crowded three and four deep around the brass rail in the back of the chamber to catch a glimpse of him.

But the emotional impact of Walesa’s presence could be seen best on the faces of two of the most senior members of the House, Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), the normally gruff Polish-American chairmen of two of the House’s most powerful committees.

Rostenkowski beamed as Walesa thanked the Polish-American community for its support. And Dingell, legendary in the House for his implacable demeanor, wiped tears from his eyes as Walesa recalled jumping over the fence around the Gdansk shipyard to assume the leadership of Solidarity’s first major strike in August, 1980.

“Now others jump fences and tear down walls,” Walesa said. “They do it because freedom is a human right.

“The wall that was separating people from freedom has collapsed,” he added. “And I hope that the nations of the world will never let it be rebuilt.”

The chief aim of Walesa’s trip to the United States, which is scheduled to include visits to New York, Chicago and Philadelphia later this week, is to drum up U.S. aid and investment for the Polish economy.

“I know that America has her own problems and difficulties,” Walesa told the members of Congress. “We are not asking for charity, we are not expecting philanthropy.”

But, he warned, communism “has led the Polish economy to ruin, to the verge of utter catastrophe.

“We have heard many beautiful words of encouragement. These are appreciated, but, being a worker and a man of concrete work, I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words.”

Later, at the broadcasting board session, he again urged Americans to invest in his country. Poland, he said, had been run for more than four decades by “stupidity and incompetence.”

“For 40 years, not one Polish city was ever painted. Two-thirds of the cities should be destroyed because they are slums,” he said, adding that the country “has 20 years of work to do.”

“Our reforms are in your interest,” continued Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his Solidarity efforts. “Now make some money from that, and I will get the Nobel Prize for Economics.”

Times staff writer Michael Ross contributed to this story.