Its leader was Aleksandr Ivanov-Sukharevsky, who founded the party in 1994 with, it has been alleged, the aid of two veterans of the Black Hundreds Vladimir Osipov and Vyacheslav Demin.

He linked up with Vyacheslav Demin, the editor of the journal Zemshchina and the two set about establishing a party that they claimed would represent the Russian Orthodox Church.

[3] In March 1999 Ivanov-Sukharevsky was arrested for promoting national hatred and whilst awaiting trial he was held in the same cell as Semyon Tokmakov, the head of the white power skinhead group Russian Goal.

[4] Tokmakov eventually fused his group into the NNP's youth movement and took over editing duties on the fourth page of the party organ Ya-Russky, in the process making the paper one of the widest read amongst Russian skinheads.

The merger, which brought a significant increase in party membership due to Belyaev's well-developed network of local cells, proved short-lived however and his wing of the NRPR was reconstituted the following year after he quarrelled with Ivanov-Sukharevsky.