Overal waar mensen zijn: national churches.

One of the fascinating aspects of the strive for independence (in the nineteenth century, during the First World War and since 1991) in Eastern Europe is the role of churches. Without exception, the institutionalized Church was and often is the most trusted institution over here. This isn't a too big surprise though, if your Communist government and its ideology just collapsed. I don't blame anybody for losing 'faith' in Post-Communist police, judges, and political parties.

Believers at the Sameba Tsminda, or Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi.

This leads to interesting situations. The Catholic church in Poland is - as the Catholic Church tends to be - part of the bigger whole, but at the same time it defines Poland and Polishness, including during the uncertain times of Post-Communism. If the Holy See would be situated in Moscow, and not in Rome, or when the Pope wouldn't have been of Polish descent during the collapse of Communism, we might have seen an independent Polish Catholic Church, I dare to say.

Orthodox believers in Samtavro Monastery in Mtskheta, Georgia.

Many Eastern Europeans aren't Catholic though, but Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Eastern Orthodox Church (and the Catholic, for that matter) originates from the Schism between the religious leaders in Rome and Constantinople in 1054. Since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Moscow tried to gain the title of 'the Third Rome'. In 1589 Moscow finally became a Patriarchate itself, independent of Constantinople. Eastern Christianity had become the state religion of Kievan Rus already in 988. Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine are successors of this medieval state. The 'Russian' Orthodox Church ('the Moscow Patriarchate') is the Church for all Eastern Slavs, therefore. However, in the centuries to follow this Church was used more and more as a Russification tool in the Russian Empire. In 1917 the Russian Empire fell apart, and in 1991 its former constituents became finally proper independent countries with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As ideological suzerainty to the Russian centre was over, religious subservience should as well, many argued. The friction between Slavic, religious and national identity leads to a complex situation.

The Red Square in Moscow, including St. Basil's Cathedral.

Ukraine has both an 'autonomous' Orthodox Church of Ukraine - part of the Russian Orthodox Church, and an Ukrainian Orthodox Church - independent. Metropolitan Filaret used his good ties with the first President of Post-Soviet Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, to establish a Church free from Moscow's jurisdiction in 1992. The Uniate Church or Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church finds its origins in 1595, when the Western parts of the current Ukraine were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland and Lithuania are predominantly Catholic, and as such the Orthodox Christians of Western Ukraine recognized the Pope, without abandoning the Eastern rites.

Trinity Monastery in Chernihiv, Ukraine.

Belarus has considerably less autonomy from Moscow than the Ukrainian Orthodox branch. The Orthodox believers in Moldova, Latvia, and Estonia have 'self-governing' Orthodox Churches, but these are also part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Most of its members are ethnic Russian, Ukrainian or Belarussian, however.

Russian Orthodox believers in Riga.

Other Post-Communist countries have their own Orthodox Churches, including Bulgaria (927), Serbia (1219), Romania (1872), Albania (1922), Poland (1924), and Czechoslovakia (1951; their church is still one, unless the country split in 1993). Bulgaria has the oldest Slavic Orthodox Church. The Serbian Orthodox Church is obviously the Church of the Serbs, but not only in Serbia alone. The majority of the people in the Bosnian Respublika Srpska and in Montenegro are also adherents. Obviously, the denomination of the Yugoslav people became very sensitive in the eighties. Not language, but religion was dividing the Catholic Croats, the Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians, and the Orthodox Serbians, Montenegrins and Macedonians. Whilst the Serbian Church was established in 1219 already, the Macedonian branch was only created in 1967, by the Communists, to foster the emergence of a Macedonian national identity. Therefore, part of the Macedonian Orthodox are still part of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Something similar is the case among the ethnic Romanian people of Moldova. The minority of Orthodox Moldovans fall under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The majority of Moldovan Orthodox however, is part of the Moldovan Orthodox Church, which is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Fresco in the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia.

Therefore, although most Western Europeans think religion and politics shouldn't be mixed, and religion and nationalism even less, it should be obvious that there is a clear link between national states and national churches in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the boundaries between present-day churches are shaped by the borders of former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The Orthodox believers of Yugoslavia (dissolved since 1991) are part of the Serbian Orthodox Church, whilst the Orthodox Christians in the rest of the Balkans (independent a century earlier) have their own churches. The Orthodox of the former Soviet Union (fallen apart in 1991) and the former Russian Empire are predominantly under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Eastern European states which were nominally independent (most of them since the nineteenth century indeed) have their own church. Ukraine was both part of the Soviet Union and partly independent in between the two world wars, and this adds to the permanent complexity of the country.

Icons on sale in Tbilisi.

Georgia has its own Orthodox Church as well. Although the Russian Orthodox Church claims jurisdiction over all Orthodox believers in the former Russian Empire, it doesn't do the same in Georgia and Armenia. This has to do with history: it weren't the Russians who introduced Christianity here. The Armenian (Apostolic) Church was founded in 301, when Christianity became the state religion of the Armenians. The Georgians became Christian also way before the Russians, in 486. In 610 the Armenian and Georgian churches split. In 1811, ten years after its incorporation into the Russian Empire, Georgia lost its autonomous Church. The Georgian liturgy, core of Georgian Orthodoxy, was replaced by Church Slavonic. In 1917 the independence of the Georgian Orthodox Church was re-established, but when the Red Army entered Georgia in 1921 the Church was heavily suppressed. In 1943 the Russian Orthodox Church eventually recognized the autonomy of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Historically Georgia was defined as the region were churches used the Georgian language. In modern times, with nation state borders, this is problematic. In Ajara live people who define themselves as ethnic Georgian, but are Muslim believers. The large Azeri and Armenian minorities are Muslim and Armenian Apostolic respectively. The new (Georgian Orthodox) cathedral of Tbilisi, Tsminda Sameba, is allegedly build on an Armenian cemetery. Slavic minorities are predominantly Russian Orthodox. And then there is of course many Georgians who adhere to Catholicism, Protestantism, or who don't believe anything at all.

Armenia (Haghpat Monastery):