The FNS was established at a congress on 24 October 1992 at which an alliance was concluded between some 3,000 communist and nationalist activists united by their opposition to the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

[1] Hard-line nationalism was represented by a number of leading authors and ideologues, including Valentin Rasputin, Alexander Prokhanov and Igor Shafarevich.

[citation needed] The involvement of Zyuganov in the FNS helped to ensure that when he established his new Communist Party in 1993 it included a significant strain of nationalism in its ideology.

[2][3] Shafarevich argued that the changes taking place in Russia were reminiscent of the settlement imposed on Germany after the First World War whilst Konstantinov, who chaired the group's organising committee, stated that the aims of the group were to oust Yeltsin as President, establish a new coalition government that would take control of prices, end the dismantling of the armaments industry and halt the removal of troops from the former Eastern Bloc states.

Amongst the founders was Nikolai Lysenko [ru] and his National Republican Party of Russia, a hard-line nationalist group that claimed to take its inspiration from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.