President Putin's successor May Be Mr. Sergey Evgenevich Naryshkin

Dr. Evgenii Novikov, a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), defected to the United States in 1988.

Dr. Novikov is an expert on Islam and on the Persian Gulf region who has written an eyepopping article about Osama Bin Laden's side-kick Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri: "A Russian Agent at the Right Hand of Bin Laden?"

I reported the late Alexander Litvinenko's scuttlebutt about Zawahiri's rumored Russian connection here, here, and here.

In an August 2007 article called "Putin's Political Strategy and the Rise of Sergei Naryshkin," Dr. Novikov describes "the process of transformation of the Soviet political system, which started in 1985, with Gorbachev's perestroika."

Dr. Novikov explains that during these grim years, thousands of new businessmen "who emerged from the former Komsomol leaders, nomenklatura, gray economy entrepreneurs, or criminal businessmen" were assassinated because they "had the temerity to imagine that they were independent owners of their businesses." Few of these murders were ever solved since the investigators came from the same agencies as the killers.

Dr. Novikov predicts that the next President of Russia may be Sergei Naryshkin, a former officer in the KGB's external intelligence service; however, Vladimir Putin will continue to be the real ruler of Russia. Dr. Novikov predicts that Valdimir Putin "will be elected as the General Secretary of the United Russia Party, and like the CPSU General Secretary in Soviet times, he will effectively outrank the Russian President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice, or Attorney General in the emerging Russian political system."

In a closing note, Dr. Novikov observes, "a traditional authoritarian model of political rule...is being restored in Russia, and the Russian people (masses) are happy with it." [full text]