Vyacheslav Lukanin

Saint Vyacheslav Lukanin, Hieromartyr, was a deacon of the Perm and Yekaterinburg diocese, a choir regent and churchman from a family of priests, who received the crown of martyrdom at Nevyansk in the Urals on 3 August 1918. Born on 4 March 1882 at Perm, he was numbered by the Russian Church among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia on 17 July 2002.

The Lukanin family

Among the servants of the Church in the Perm governorate of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries the Lukanin family holds an honoured place. Its members were priests, deacons, cantors and readers in the towns of Perm, Yekaterinburg, Irbit, Shadrinsk, Krasnoufimsk, Kungur, Osa, Okhansk, Kizel, Alexandrovsk and Solikamsk. The best known were Archpriest Alexander Matveyevich Lukanin (1821 to 1889) of the Transfiguration cathedral in Perm, member of the consistory, editor of the diocesan journal, missionary and author of works on local history, and Archpriest Stefan Alexandrovich Lukanin (1841 to 1904) of the Dormition convent in Perm, missionary and founder of the Belogorsk Saint Nicholas monastery. Three Lukanins were glorified among the New Martyrs of the Perm and Yekaterinburg diocese: Fr Stefan Vasilyevich Lukanin, Fr Veniamin Vasilyevich Lukanin and Deacon Vyacheslav Georgievich Lukanin.

Childhood and school

Vyacheslav was born on the commemoration of Saint Vyacheslav, the martyred Prince of Bohemia, at Perm, into the family of Georgy (Yegor) Avksentyevich and Vera Pavlovna Lukanin. The family was large; of the children are known Alexander (1878), Antonin (1880), John (died at ten days), Maximilian (1885), Larisa (died at two) and Vyacheslav. His father, a graduate of the Perm seminary (1875), served twelve years in the provincial administration, reaching the rank of collegiate councillor, and taught Russian and Church Slavonic at the ecclesiastical school in Perm. In November 1887 he was ordained priest at the school's house church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, remaining also a teacher. He died in 1894, and Vyacheslav was left in the care of his grandfather, Archpriest Avksenty Lukanin, a good and humble pastor. From frequent attendance at services the boy became familiar with church chant and the first elements of music.

In 1895 he was put in the preparatory class of the ecclesiastical school in Perm, and in 1896 he entered the first class. Gifted with a fine voice, he did his obedience in the choir and gave all his free time to singing. By his graduation in 1899 he had taken the short courses in singing and conducting given each year by the famous opera singer and conductor Alexander Dmitrievich Gorodtsov. At the examinations he showed excellent results in singing, harmonium and violin. In 1899 he entered the Perm seminary, a few dozen metres from the Transfiguration cathedral, where he went on singing in the choir and was named assistant to the singing teacher, Fr Vasily Streshnev, and regent of the right-⁠hand choir at the church of Saint John the Theologian.

Choir regent

According to the Perm Diocesan Gazette of 1901, after the winter break Vyacheslav was behind in all subjects because of illness. For reasons of health and probably lack of money he left the seminary and became regent of the pupils' choir of the ecclesiastical school and of the amateur choir of the Holy Trinity church at the Motovilikha works, as well as a singer in the episcopal choir of Bishop Peter (Losev). With a lyric-⁠dramatic baritone voice, practical experience and good knowledge of the liturgical texts, in April 1902 he became assistant regent of the episcopal choir of the Transfiguration cathedral and supervisor of the singers living in the bishop's house. The episcopal choir was the leading choir of the governorate and guardian of the traditions of Russian choral singing.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the help of the provincial temperance committee, many parishes of the diocese were setting up popular choirs, which took part in services and gave spiritual and secular concerts. In June 1902 the churchwarden of the Holy Trinity church at the Kizel works, Yakov Andrianovich Metelkin, asked Bishop John to send an experienced regent. On 20 July 1902 the reader Vyacheslav Lukanin was named regent of the Holy Trinity church. For lack of singers, the first formation of the choir included teachers with spiritual training and graduates of the girls' school at Kizel, among them his future wife, Maria Gordeyevna Galkina. In the following years the choir grew, with deacons, readers, office workers and the wives and relatives of priests; the payroll of March 1914 lists forty-⁠three people, probably one of the largest church choirs of the Perm diocese.

On 24 October 1903 he married Maria Gordeyevna Galkina, who was only fifteen and a half, the marriage being performed by Fr Pavel Sapozhnikov with the deacons Andrei Vlasov and Vasily Afanasyev. At the feast of Saint Simeon, the patronal feast, when Bishop John visited the Kizel parish a second time, Vyacheslav met him with solemn chants with his whole choir. Archpriest Alexander Korovin described this service in the diocesan journal: the choir, under the reader Vyacheslav Lukanin, sang with spirit "From the rising of the sun to its setting", and at the liturgy, with six priests and three deacons, the large choir sang harmoniously and with special feeling the Cherubic hymn, "A mercy of peace" and the Lord's Prayer, and in place of the communion verse the psalm "Hear, O God, my prayer" was beautifully sung.

Deacon and martyr

He was later ordained deacon and served at the Transfiguration cathedral of the Nevyansk works in the Yekaterinburg diocese. He suffered martyrdom at Nevyansk on 3 August 1918, the year in which Soviet power began the persecution of the clergy in the Urals. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia on 17 July 2002, and is commemorated with them.