The party was established as the Democratic National Freedom League (Demokratinė tautos laisvės santara known simply as Santara and its members as santarininkai) in March 1917 by Lithuanian refugees in Saint Petersburg.
[2] Its members were liberal intelligentsia, including future Ministers of Justice Petras Leonas and Stasys Šilingas, diplomats Vaclovas Sidzikauskas and Jurgis Baltrušaitis.
[4] It won two seats in the 1926 elections (Rapolas Skipitis and Jonas Pranas Aleksa), forming part of the government coalition with the Lithuanian Popular Peasants' Union and the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania.
[6] Following the 1926 coup, the party was a member of Antanas Smetona's coalition government alongside the Lithuanian Nationalist Union and the Christian Democratic Bloc.
It sought to support the interests of agriculture and industry, as well as measures to develop Lithuanian culture.