Kamenyar


Kamenyar is a Slavic word meaning stone cutter in a quarry, or quarryman.
The word became particularly famous during Soviet times because of the revolutionary poem "Kamenyari", by Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko. In this poem, slaves bound by chains smash through rock using sledgehammers. The poem is allegorical, describing the twin ideas of liberation from an oppressive past and of the laying down of a highway for future social progress by pioneers.
The stone breaker Kamenyar became a revolutionary symbol in Ukrainian and wider soviet culture as well as a metaphorical name for Ivan Franko himself.