Tusk has described the city of his youth as "a typical frontier town" with "many borders ... between ethnicities". This, together with his Kashubian ethnic ancestry and multilingual family, meant that he grew up with an awareness that "nothing is simple in life or in history", which informed his adult political view that it is "best to be immune to every kind of orthodoxy, of ideology and most importantly, nationalism". He has described his young life under communism as "so hopeless" due to the boredom and monotony, with "no hope for anything to change". His young self was a "typical hooligan" who often got into fights – "we would roam the streets, you know, cruising for a bruising."