The Russian “Hollywood”? The Orthodox Church as Instrument of Soft Power in the Balkans
The Christian church split in 1054 into the Western and Eastern branch. The Western branch with its center in Rome came to be known as the Catholic church (further splitting during the Protestant Reformation several centuries later). The Eastern branch with its center in Constantinople (Istanbul) was not able to maintain unity as long as the Western branch. Already with the fall of Byzantium and the conquests by the Ottoman Turks, it split into more than a dozen churches tied to the particular monarchs and nations.