What is "kamenyar"

Kamenyar, 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" (, plural of Каменяр), by Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko (1856–1916). 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 (Polish, Russian and Austro-Hungarian rule of Ukraine) and of the laying down of a highway for future social progress by pioneers.

The stone breaker Kamenyar thus became a revolutionary symbol in Ukrainian culture as well as a metaphorical name for Ivan Franko himself.