concept
Chumazy ("the grubby fellow")
the grubby fellow
also: чумазый, chumazy
Contemptuous epithet, popularized by Saltykov-Shchedrin, for the upwardly mobile commoner or newly moneyed bourgeois/kulak type pressing into gentry privilege; used obsessively by Pavel Rashevich in 'At the Manor' as his catch-all term for the class he claims is degenerating civilization.
Reading notes
- At the Manor §6 grubby fellow
"Чумазый", Rashevich's running epithet for the upwardly mobile commoner, is translated consistently as "the grubby fellow" throughout to preserve it as a single recurring slur; see the headnote for its literary background in Saltykov-Shchedrin.