Anton Prehznev is an agent of the Russian Nihilist Party.
Vladimir Mihalovitch (last name unknown) is also an agent of that organization.
First a few words about the Nihilists, a group working out of London as part of an illegal but quite active pact of revolutionists. The online Oxford Dictionary provides a historic definition of a 'nihilist' as "a supporter of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900 which found nothing to approve of in the established social order".
Russia in the mid-1800's was ruled by Alexander II, a man known as the Liberator who emancipated the Russian serfs in 1861 as just one of his many steps to reform the autocratic rule over the huge empire of the Russia's. For all his efforts to, in his mind, make life better for the common man in Russia, he was still the target of revolutionists who wanted even more reforms that they were seeing and in 1881 he was assassinated by explosives thrown by a three-man team.
The new Tzar was Alexander III who, by most reports, favored a return to the belief of absolute power of the nobility resulting in a crackdown on the dissidents and anarchists who had advocated change, regardless of their having had any part in the killing of his father. This would only inflame the anger of these people, many of whom had to flee Russia for their safety and took up residence in London.
There are two men are mentioned at the top of this text: Anton and Vladimir. Both men are the same individual.
In 1892, a series of stories concerning the adventure of Vladimir were released in (possibly) magazine format. They detail the life of a well-to-do young boy of Jewish parents who along with his sister, Mascha, enjoyed life growing up in St. Petersburg where his parents were considered prominent members of "good society". Weekly parties and gatherings were common and his prospects were exceptional.
When Vladimir reached mandatory age for service in the military, he willingly left to do his duty. Had he not been of Jewish descent he would certainly have been made an officer but being a "Hebrew" was limited to the enlisted ranks. Nevertheless, he was still succeeding in his new career.
It was a couple years after he left that a change happened back home; his father having somehow fallen out of favor with the Tsar was arrested by the "Security Section" and a fortnight later shipped off to Siberia to die soon after. His mother and Mascha were left out in the street to beg for bread. When Vladimir was finally able to end his enlistment and return home, his mother was hours from death.
Mascha, rejecting the lascivious offers of a high ranking government official, was accosted and when she fought back was severely beaten with a whip. When Vladimir tried to help her, he was labeled a Nihilist and immediately sentenced to work in the silver mines in Siberia.
As Vladimir explains it, though he had never dreamed of rebelling against the Tsar's rule, from the moment of his arrest after seeing the treatment of his beloved sister, he was devoted to the Nihilist cause. When he was finally able to escape captivity and make his way to London, he was launched on his new career as an espionage agent of that group.
Now on to Anton Prehznev.
Four years after the release of the dozen tales depicting major events in Vladimir's life, a book was released containing the same adventures as well as three additional escapades. However, no mention existed in the new versions of Vladimir. Instead the name of the man was Anton. Many of the street names are altered and names of people that Vladimir/Anton will interact with are changed as well. Additional statements and observations are thrown in but everything that Vladimir's versions contained remain in Anton's.
It would be safe to say that other than the name changes, the Anton version is just like Vladimir's but with more explanation and additional detail.
Throughout all of Anton/Vladimir's recounting of his espionage activities to bring down the autocracy of the Tsar, he describes over and over the malfeasance and evil that has corrupted Russia's leaders. At the end of the last adventure in Vladimir's version, he mentions that "at present, the Russian people are disloyal and socialistic, their stifled patriotic feelings being concealed beneath the iron mask of Nihilism".
He predicts, "Until the new era dawns - as it certainly must ere long - the Great White Terror will continute to combat Autocracy and Officialdom, its Damoclean force becoming stronger and more irresistible, until it brings a disaster upon the House of the Romanoffs that will startle the world". Anton's version adds, "then a time will follow like that under Ivan the Terrible."
The revolution that Anton/Vladimir predicts and so desperately wants would not come in actuality for two decades but it would come. Unfortunately for the Russian people, the resultant government would not be quite as idyllic as Anton/Vladimir was craving.