[1] His mother remained unknown but she was speculated to be Natalya Petrovna Kotlinskaya who was a telegram operator at the Pskov railway station [ru].

[1] After graduating from a Realschule in 1913, Vladimir Kotlinsky passed the exams at the Military Topographic School [ru] in St. Petersburg.

In the summer of 1914, after his first year of service as a junker,[3] they underwent standard geodetic practice near Rezhitsa in the Vitebsk Governorate.

[5] Despite this, not much is known about Kotlinsky's career prior to his service at the Attack of the Dead but the article The Feat of Pskov describes him as: At the beginning of the war, a young man, lieutenant Kotlinsky, who had just graduated from the military topographic school, was seconded to the N regiment.

On September 26, 1916, he was posthumously awarded the Order of St. George, fourth Class for his bravery during the attack:[7][8] For being seconded to the 226th Zemlyansky Infantry Regiment, on July 24, 1915, in the battle near the Osowiec fortress, when the Germans, with a force of about 5 regiments, using poisonous suffocating gases, occupied the part of the advanced positions left by us, realizing the danger of the situation, inspiring the lower ranks of his company, quickly rushed forward with it, with a bayonet blow he knocked the Germans out of the trenches they occupied and, with the support of private support, gradually knocking the enemy out of the trenches, restored the original position.