Enthusiastic youth volunteers were a common sight on Poland's ‘great building site of socialism’ of the Stalin era, the steelworks and new town of Nowa Huta. Paradoxically, however, the succesful mobilisation of youthful labour in Nowa Huta was accompanied by failure to socialise volunteers in their attitudes and behaviours after hours. Preferring jazz to mass songs and speak-easies to ‘red corners’, brigade members gained notoriety as ‘hooligans’, and many encountered difficulties adapting to ‘civilian’ life in the new town. The regime's inability to bridge the gulf between itself and Nowa Huta's youth volunteers, the author argues, reflects Polish Stalinism's critical failure to secure legitimacy among its potentially strongest supporters.