By saying this, they usually sneer at someone’s excessive straightforwardness in achieving a goal, hinting that you can choose smarter and more elegant methods.
The phrase became popular thanks to a sculpture of Ivan Shadr. In honor of the decade of the October Revolution, he created a composition, in which he tried to capture the collective image of the first proletarian freedom fighters, and called it “Bulyzhnik - oruzhiye proletariata” (“Cobblestone - the weapon of the proletariat”). The sculpture was widely known in the USSR and its name became a joke.
Now, the original is on display in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, while copies can be found in the park of the December Uprising and in the Museum of Modern History of Russia.
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