 His father, Alexander Bougrine, was an icon restorer and his painter mother Nathalie Anikina also worked at the Hermitage.He was brought up in two rooms at his ancestral home on the Neva River, transformed after the Revolution into community accommodation.When the German army surrounded Leningrad in September 1941 beginning the 900-day Siege, Vladimir and his sister suffered the famine and the cold that would kill mostly the young and the old.