Economically, it called for the gradual reduction of state intervention into the economy and a "guarantee of the social defense of the population".

During this time, the rehabilitation of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA) among national democratic circles became a point of contention, especially for the party's eastern members, even as Pavlychko declared that the party would oppose both the "dictatorship of Bolshevism" and the integral nationalism of Dmytro Dontsov.

[4] Upon its founding the party had a faction of 23 deputies in the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR led by Dymytro Pavlychko, and claimed another 19 "sympathisers".

[4] The party initially chose people's deputy and economist Volodymyr Pylypchuk as its candidate in the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election but failed to collect enough signatures for his candidacy.

Instead, the party opted to support ex-Communist Leonid Kravchuk despite the presence of other national democratic candidates such as Rukh's Viacheslav Chornovil.

[8] In July 2011 the chairman of the Democratic Party of Ukraine Sergey Kozachenko was sentenced to eight years in prison Kyiv District Court of Simferopol on charges of embezzling ₴65 million in credit union's "Southern".