In Eastern Europe, private members’ clubs are very much a post-Soviet development. Notions of private space, like private property, did not sit well in the Soviet Union; and so today’s Eastern European clubs are all initiatives launched since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. That does not mean they lack history, however - many are based in historic city centres, occupying carefully restored heritage properties. Furthermore, it is precisely because they are new, that many offer up-to-date facilities, from telecommunications to gyms.
It is a feature of Eastern European clubs that they tend to be strongly focused around business - the “new Europe” has made a clean break from the communist years, and the clubs act as a networking centre. “No business at the club” is not a notion found here. Like the newer western European clubs, many of them are proprietary establishments, rather than owned by their members.
The Baltic states
The Baltic states have seen several clubs open. Some have been short-lived, like The Lobby in Riga, which opened to great fanfare in 2017, but then closed during Covid lockdowns and never reopened.
One of the more idiosyncratic is the Šoti Klubi (Scottish Club) of Tallinn, based in the Old Town. This opened in 1993, with club rooms above a public-facing Michelin-starred restaurant, the Lee Brasserie, and its own courtyard Šoti Park, and the Club places a particular emphasis on Scotch whisky. Membership is not limited to the Scottish expat community of Estonia; with Honorary Consul of Scotland Iain Lawson recalling that after Estonian independence in 1991:
“the common denominator and interest became Scotland, its culture and customs, and relatedly, whiskey, which symbolized the ultimate luxury in Soviet times.”
The Club is owned by an elected 12-member Board and its President. The late Sir Sean Connery accepted honorary membership.
(UPDATE: AS OF 2026, THE CLUB HAS NOW CLOSED DOWN, WITH THE LEE BRASSERIE NOW TAKING UP THE WHOLE BUILDING, THOUGH IT HAS RETAINED A “SCOTTISH ROOM”, AS A MEMORIAL TO THE CLUB.)
The terrace of the Šoti Klubi in Talinn. (Photo credit: Post Times of Estonia.)
Lithuania’s Vilniaus Klubas opened in 1998. The Mayor of Vilnius is made the Club’s President throughout their term of office, and since 2008, it has been based in the old mansion of the Umiastovski family, by permission of the Vilnius Municipality, with an agreement in place for the Club to restore the building. The Club is a publicly-traded entity, with 173 shareholders, both individuals and companies.
The drawing room of the Vilniaus Klubas in Vilnius. (Photo credit: Vilniaus Klubas facebook group.)
Central Eastern Europe
The Prague Business Club was created in 2002, the brainchild of entrepreneur Luboš Drobík, who remains its President and owner. He recalls:
“I didn’t really plan anything about the club that much at the beginning, I did not even plan to start it in the first place. The best things in life seem to come to you by accident…It happened twenty years ago, when, as a family, we rented a beautiful villa in Bubeneč, Prague, and realized that some great events could be held there.”
As the name suggests, the emphasis is very much on business, with members tending to be the owners of Czech companies, and the social life of the Club rotating around the 100 business dinners hosted each year. The clubhouse is on Wenceslas Square, in an Art Nouveau mansion built in 1900 by Alois Dlabač.
A speaker event at the Prague Business Club. (Photo credit: Prague Business Club website.)
Another business club is the Klub Polskiej Rada Biznesu (Polish Business Roundtable Club) near Warsaw, founded in 1997. It owes its name to the Polish Roundtable Talks of 1989, which helped to bring an end to Communist rule, and the Polish Business Roundtable founded in 1992, which exists as a forum for Polish businesses. The Club long met in the Sobański Palace in the capital. It is owned by Marek Jankowski.
The Pałac Sobańskich (Sobański Palace), which hosts the Klub Polskiej Rady Biznesu in Warsaw. (Photo credit: Konferantal website.)
A similar institution is the CEO Club of Ukraine. This grew out of informal business conversations convened by Sergey Gaydaychuk, and he formalised it as a club in 2017, with a clubhouse in central Kyiv. It is focused around some 250 members, and with an expat community in London it recently opened a related London CEO Club that has secured premises on Pall Mall, which will be styled the Anglo-Ukrainian Club.
The lounge of the CEO Club of Kyiv. (Photo credit: KyivMaps.com)
The Slovakian Republic follows more of a country club model with the Club Penati, 5km north-west of Bratislava. This was founded in 2004, and is owned by Jaroslav Kachlik. And even though it is primarily a sports and country club, it still places a premium on business facilities.
The Club Penati operates a significant rural estate. (Photo credit: Club Penati website.)
In Hungary, there is the “BrodyLand Group”, a small chain of clubs in and around Budapest founded by William Clothier and Peter Grundberg. This started with Brody House, a public-facing, 8-bedroom boutique hotel, with an artists-themed members’ club attached to it. There followed The Studios (formerly Brody Studios) in 2014; and The Workshop creative space, and the Living Quarters (formerly Paulay House) rental apartments, both of which opened in 2018. BrodyLand also opened a retreat just outside the city which subsequently closed, the Writer’s Villa (2016-22).
The interior courtyard of Brody House, Budapest. (Photo credit: Out There Travel.)
Southern Eastern Europe
Bulgaria’s only private members’ club is the Residence Club in the centre of Sofia. This opened in 2011 in an Edwardian-era mansion built by Friedrich Grünanger in the Austro-Hungarian style for Sofia’s former mayor, Dimitar Jablanski. In the summer months, much of the Club’s social life revolves around the gardens.
The drawing room of the Residence Club in Sofia. (Photo credit: Residence Exclusive Club group on Facebook.)
With the strong maritime culture along the Mediterranean, Aegean and the Adriatic, there are numerous yacht clubs dotted around - too many to list. But an example includes the Porto Montenegro Yacht Club in Tivat, founded in 2007. The Club is owned by Adriatic Marinas, a subsidiary of the Investment Corporation of Dubai, the principal investment arm of the government of Dubai.
The Porto Montenegro Yacht Club in Tivat. (Photo credit: Pressmare.)
Russia
There have been several clubs in Russia since the 1990s, which broadly fit into three categories: those with close links to the Putin regime, those with close links to organised crime, and those with close links to both. With regards to the latter two categories, several of the clubs set up in Moscow in the 1990s subsequently closed down amid mafia turf wars with their competition.
In line with the general bounds of acceptability in London Clubland (and indeed across so much of Eastern Europe), Russian clubs will not be spotlighted in this newsletter, until Ukraine has successfully repulsed the invaders from its borders.
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.
I managed a very decent chortle at your classification of Russian clubs 😁
I'm less familiar with the famous clubs that existed in St Petersburg until 1917, but apparently the imperial capital had a very active club life before the revolution...