Stepashin, 42, is known as a loyal supporter of President Boris Yeltsin and a career officer of the Interior Ministry, which traditionally has been a rival of the KGB.
The choice of a policeman to head the Federal Counterintelligence Service is in stark contrast to the man Stepashin will replace, Nikolai Golushko, who was a career KGB officer.
But Golushko's predecessor, Viktor Barannikov, was also an Interior Ministry official. Chosen by Yeltsin as the man who would reform the Soviet Union's security monster, Barannikov later sided with parliament in its October standoff against the Kremlin.
The attraction of appointing a policeman to head the security services is that they are familiar with the work, but lack the "negative aura" of career KGB officials, according to Boris Pustyntsev, a dissident who spent five years in prison and knew Stepashin personally.
"If a man like Golushko is appointed, it would be much worse," he said. "The new head should not be from the depths of the KGB."
As a deputy in the former Supreme Soviet, Stepashin headed the influential defense and security committee.
Alexander Mikhailov, a spokesman for the Federal Counterintelligence Service, said that despite the fact that Stepashin had served most time of his life in the Interior Ministry he "is a real professional" and "he is held in respect in the service."Stepashin joined the ranks of the ex-KGB more than two years ago. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 he was appointed Deputy Security Minister, a post he held simultaneously with the chairmanship of the parliament's defense and security committee.
In his politics, Stepashin has always sided with the country's demokraty, but he is not considered a liberal.
When Stepashin was elected to parliament in 1990 he ran on the ticket of Leningrad's democratic movement, which later became Democratic Russia.
Lev Ponomaryov, co-chairman of the Democratic Russia movement and a former Supreme Soviet deputy, said Stepashin had voted very often with Democratic Russia in parliament but was a very "cautious" man.
He said Stepashin had not been sufficiently "resolute" in reforming the former KGB there.
"Despite his being a democrat in his views, he is not successful in the following these views," said Pustyntsev.
He said Stepashin had caused a furor among human rights activists in the city when he left by commending Viktor Cherkessov, the head of the St. Petersburg Security Ministry's Investigation Department, who was "a professional hunter for dissidents."
Cherkessov, said Pustyntsev, had launched the investigation of Valeriya Novodvorskaya, one of the last people to be accused of anti-Soviet propaganda, in 1989.
"I doubt that Stepashin was unaware of this," said Pustyntsev.
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