The SRS was founded in 1991 as a merger of two minor right-wing parties whose leaders were Vojislav Šešelj and Tomislav Nikolić. They later became the President and Deputy President of the party respectively. During the first half of the 1990s, the SRS supported the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia regime, which had contributed greatly to the rise of SRS through the use of media. The party had strong support until the 2000 election, when they suffered a major defeat, but they would soon quickly rise up again to become one of the major parties. Šešelj led the party from its foundation in 1991 until his indictment in 2003, when he voluntarily surrendered to the ICTY to defend himself against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity that he was alleged to have committed during the Croatian War of Independence and the Bosnian War. His deputy president Tomislav Nikolić assumed "de facto" leadership of the party until its split in 2008.