Political biography has fallen out of fashion, so Mikolaj Stanislaw Kunicki's fascinating biography of Boleslaw Piasecki is a welcome reminder of how the genre can provide insight into larger political issues. Between the Brown and the Red is also a reminder of the pitfalls of biography, which inevitably struggles to balance the role of the individual with the whirlwind of complex social, cultural, and political forces. While Kunicki is not always successful in striking this balance, the merits of this book far outweigh its shortcomings.

Kunicki recounts the career of the Polish right-wing nationalist, sometime fascist, sometime communist, and always Catholic Boleslaw Piasecki. He was a remarkable—and despicable—political opportunist whose public career began in far right student movements of the 1930s and ended with his elevation to Poland's Council of State in the 1970s. As Kunicki convincingly asserts, Piasecki's story reveals “the persistence of the right and of the pluralistic rather than totalitarian nature of East European communism” (181).

Piasecki's success came from his ability to position himself as a broker between the Catholic Church, the communist government, and, perhaps, Soviet influence. Piasecki was a devout Catholic, but his relationship with his Church was a contentious one. As the founder and leader of PAX, a lay-Catholic organization that championed an alliance between the Catholic Church and Poland's communist government, Piasecki struggled to retain influence with both institutions. When he championed communism, most notably in his 1956 book Essential Issues, he alienated the Catholic Church and barely avoided excommunication. Without his Catholic credentials, he equally risked losing influence with the Party, which tolerated his Catholicism precisely because it valued his influence with the Church. As he scrambled to retain influence in both worlds, his life became a metaphor for the struggle to balance nationalist, Catholic, and socialist forces in Poland.

Piasecki's survival, and his persistent political influence for over forty years, is a testament to both his political savvy and his execrable opportunism. He came closest to achieving his goal of an official place in the highest circles of Polish political power in 1967–1968, when he emerged as one of the foremost cheerleaders for the anti-Semitic purge of Jews from high office. But once that purge had run its course, Piasecki again found himself on the fringes of power, more useful as a broker than a boss. By the 1970s, as Party leadership grew more pragmatic and official representatives of the Church grew more influential, Piasecki's value to all sides faded.

The one failing of this fascinating study is that, perhaps inevitably, Kunicki overemphasizes Piasecki's role in Polish political life. While Piasecki was sometimes influential, he was often pushed to the margins of power in Poland. Did he really, as Kunicki asserts in his conclusion, play “an important role in the nationalization of socialism in Poland” (182), or rather, was his life symptomatic of larger social, cultural, and political forces? I cannot help but conclude that Kunicki goes too far when he links Tadeusz Rydzyk, the powerful leader of the Catholic far right in Poland today, to Piasecki. The similarities between the two men are clear, but the balance of evidence suggests that what unites them is the broader Polish context that they share.

But this is a small criticism of a very good book. Kunicki's research is thorough, extending to major archives in Poland and the West. His reading in the relevant secondary literature is equally thorough, and he succinctly places his study in its larger Eastern European historical context. While this is a work aimed primarily at specialists, he does an effective job of summarizing larger Polish political issues in the period, and his conclusion makes important connections between the communist and post-communist periods.

Between the Brown and the Red should find its place on the bookshelves of scholars concerned not only with Poland under communist rule, but equally with those who study Eastern Europe, nationalism, and the role of religion in both. It is not a book for neophytes, for it demands considerable prior knowledge of modern Polish history, but for specialists it is a valuable and original contribution.