The National Salvation Front (FNS) was a Russian ultranationalist coalition which existed from April 1988 to 1994, established by several communist, socialist, and far-right nationalist parties in opposition to Boris Yeltsin's regime following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. Inspired by "Popular Front" movements in the Baltics, several Soviet nationalist intellectuals conceived the idea of a Russian public movement of democratic forces on an all-Union scale in 1988. On 18 June 1989, the Leningrad People's Front was founded, attracting working people and intelligentsia into their ranks. On 24 October 1992, 3,000 communist and nationalists joined forces to form the "National Salvation Front", and its early members included Soviet officials such as Albert Makashov and Viltor Alksnis, future CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov, and National Bolshevik Party leader Eduard Limonov. Igor Shafarevich argued that the changes taking place in Russia were reminiscent of the post-World War II settlement imposed on Germany, and, although the ideological diversity within the FNS occasionally led to splinters, all of the parties shared a nostalgia for the Soviet era and staunch nationalism. On 28 October 1992, President Yeltsin declared the FNS unconstitutional, making it the first organization to be outlawed since the fall of communism. On 12 February 1993, the Constitutional Court overturned the ban, and it established a shadow government during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis and prepared to take control from Yeltsin. The Constitutional Court's defeat at the end of the crisis led to the FNS being banned from participating in that year's State Duma elections, and the LDPR - which had not participated in the FNS - won much of the nationalist vote. The FNS fell apart in 1994 when its leadership criticized Yeltsin for his heavy-handed response to North Caucasian separatism, while the National Bolshevik Party and Russian National Unity praised Yeltsin's decisiveness and supported the First Chechen War.
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