Rambunctiousness. About the Public Debate on Demoralized Youth in the First Decade after the Second World War

One of the important topics of public debates (especially in the press) in the first decade after World War II was the crime-prone or already delinquent youth. They were attended by journalists, publicists, scientists, writers (Kazimierz Koźniewski, Leopold Tyrmand), filmmakers. First, there was concern about children who had experienced a blatant disregard for ethical norms. In the early 1950s, people wrote about the scourge of hooliganism, linking it to the Cold War climate. During the thaw years of the 1960s, the hooligan was made rehabilitated to be either a representative of the counterculture or a victim of a “bad home.” These debates exhibited a considerable degree of ideologization which made a reliable diagnosis all but impossible. The aim of the article is to analyze the discourse on demoralized youth in terms of its variable dynamics, formal and functional differentiation.