His father, Ilya Nikolaevich (1831-1886), of Orthodox faith, came from Astrakhan, graduate in mathematics with the famous Professor Lobachevsky, a founder of the non-Euclidean geometry, from 1863 he taught mathematics and physics in school in Nizhny Novgorod, where the same year he met and married Marya Alexandrovna Blank (1835-1916), in 1869 accepted the post of inspector of primary schools in the governorate of Simbirsk, and moved there with his wife, already pregnant with Vladimir, and with their two children Anna (1864) and Alexander (1866-1887). In 1874 he was appointed headmaster, with the rank of Counsellor of State awarded the Order of St. Vladimir for the inclusion in the gentry and the right to the transmissibility of the title. The mother, the daughter of a doctor of German origin belonging to the community Baronsk of the Volga Germans, non-practicing Lutheran and raised three children, Olga (1872-1891), Dmitri (1875-1943) and Marya (1878-1937). In 1879 Vladimir joined the I-school class in 1883 his elder brother Alexander enrolled at the University of St. Petersburg to study natural sciences, 12 January 1886 her father died.
