It was founded on 8 May 1988 by a group of Soviet dissidents including Valeriya Novodvorskaya, Sergei Grigoryants and Yevgeniya Debryanskaya.

Practical preparation for the first constituent congress of the party was carried out in a country house at the Kratovo station near Moscow, where human rights activist Sergei Grigoryants lived.

One of the meetings of the constituent congress was held on the platform of this station.

The party gained fame thanks to the full-scale party newspaper Svobodnoye Slovo, which was distributed throughout the USSR, with a weekly circulation in 1991 of 55,000 copies.

The party has become known after a series of unsanctioned demonstrations organized and consistently taking place from 1988[1] to 1991 in Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), with the protesters getting arrested.