Stephen Lukanin

Holy Hieromartyr Stephen Lukanin was a priest in the village of Kolchedan in the Urals and was shot in 1918 at Sinara station, together with the deacons George Begma and Nestor Gudzovsky, for refusing to accept the new godless power.

The priest and the two deacons served at the parish church of the Meeting of the Lord in Kolchedan, Kamensk district. They refused to accept the new godless power and did not renounce God; for this they were taken to Sinara station and shot. According to one version, the nuns buried the slain servants in the church grounds; the sources say no more of them. In August 2009, ninety years after their death, a wooden cross with the names of the new martyrs of Kolchedan was placed in the centre of the village, beside the monument to the dead of the Great Patriotic War, and the hegumen Nestor of the Transfiguration Monastery in Kamensk-⁠Uralsky and the priest Nicholas of the Holy Trinity cathedral served a molieben, attended by nuns, representatives of the administration and the descendants of Deacon George Begma, who took the initiative for the cross. The deacon's great-⁠grandson says that George's daughter, Nina, often visited Kolchedan, knowing that her father's grave was there, and kept the Begma family photo archive, so that it is known what the martyrs of Kolchedan looked like. In their village there had been two churches, that of the convent of the Protection and the huge church of the Meeting of the Lord in the centre, but they were wiped from the face of the earth. The men's Monastery of the Transfiguration has a dependency there and intends to arrange the place beside the cross.

Stephen is commemorated on 23 July and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg.