Russian classic bikes are still a rare sight in the UK, but they have one of the most enthusiastic owners’ clubs in the world catering for them...

The Cossack Owners’ Club is a perfect example of the ‘small is beautiful’ theory. There are plenty of bigger clubs which have thousands of potential enthusiasts to entice into their ranks. There’s a natural audience for the Triumph, BSA or Norton clubs, for instance. But any club which serves those other motorcyclists, the ones whose interests are rather more unusual, almost inevitably develops along a different path to the major marque organisations. If you want information about a postwar BSA 650 twin then you really don’t have to look very far. If, on the other hand, you want to know all about the Ishevsk Planeta Sport then you won’t find thousands of web pages crammed with information, nor can you purchase a buyer’s guide and an owners manual and ten reprint roadtests at the drop of a mouse.

No, if your interests lead you towards Eastern European motorcycles in general, and Russian and ex-Soviet machines in particular, then the Cossack Owners’ Club is pretty much the only game in town. And because it IS the sole source of information on these bikes for many people, the Club punches way beyond its weight in terms of its magazine, the information within, and the services it offers.

The Cossack Owners’ Club cunningly publish both a full-size magazine (twice a year) and a monthly newsletter. This means that the Club members don’t have to wait for months to hear from the Club but it keeps costs under control (and it stops the volunteer magazine and newsletter editors disappearing under the workload). This is a massive improvement over many much bigger clubs which can only afford the time and resources to produce a club publication every other month or so. The issue of Horizontal View which we laid paws on was a whopping 56-page bumper A4 edition, and it contained more information in it than many commercial magazines, never mind club ones…

As well as the kind of general information you’d expect, detailing the activities of the Club and the committee’s comings and goings, this issue of Horizontal View also offered a sheaf of interesting articles; The Black Beast of Ovenden Moor, a 350cc M31, BMW’s official response to the club on the origin of the M72, show reports, leaking oil seals, alternative gear ratios, an unusual Ural model, Kiev Motor Works timeline and model history, 40 years and 500,000km with a Ural M63… and heaps more. Even if you have no intention of owning a Cossack or similar motorcycle, there’s plenty to interest anyone with a genuine enthusiasm for old (or odd) bikes.

So who produces this fine publication? The Cossack Owners Club is an independent and well established UK based motorcycle club financed entirely by its members. It represents owners and enthusiasts of motorcycles and sidecars made in the Soviet Union or the former Soviet states, such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and the others. These include all models of Ural, Dnieper/Dnepr, Ishevsk (Jupiter and Planeta), Voskhod, Minsk, Riga and their sidecars. These machines were and still are sold in the UK either under their original manufacturers name or under UK trade names including Cossack, Neval, Britaine or Regent and their UK model names including Soviet Knight, Phoenix and Classic.

The Cossack Owners’ Club welcomes members from around the world, although approximately 95% it members are based in the UK. The Club aims is to support the owners of these machines so they can be kept on the road forever - and for owners and others to enjoy them for what they are. The Club has been going, in one form or another, since 1973. And they’re a friendly, helpful bunch; even though the Club doesn’t specifically cater for the Chinese flat-twins, owners of Chang-Jiang bikes are welcome to join the Club and benefit from the organisation’s experience with the similar Soviet M72. The Cossack Owners’ Club also supports owners of all older Soviet motorcycles whether of Soviet origin, or derived from the pre-WWII BMW R71 designs or other sources such as DKW. Some documentation and technical advice is available to keep these machines running and returned to their former glory.

As we said at the beginning, some clubs (and very often it’s the smaller ones), just try harder. The Cossack Owners’ Club offers all this for £14 for UK membership, and you can pay online via the club’s website. So if you’ve ever fancied one of the bikes, but not been certain that you have the resources to live with it in the long term – here’s your opportunity. The Cossack Owners’ Club stand ready to back you up. Now you just need to find the Ural of your dreams…

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Cossack Owners’ Club:
www.cossackownersclub.co.uk

More about Urals:

There are occasional articles about Russian motorcycles in the monthly RealClassic magazine. See RC19 for a feature on the Ural Gear-Up, RC30 for a Dnepr 650, and RC49 for the definitive story on whether you really can fit a BMW engine straight into Cossack. You can buy any of these issues here

Ural roadtest on RealClassic.co.uk: