Forced conversion in Orthodox missions

This is still a draft, far from done. I have already presented much of this to Ubi Petrus in the comment section on youtube a month ago.

The Eastern Orthodox apologists Ubi Petrus insisted EO missions differ from RCC in that they never used forced conversions. Far from true! His video is primarily about the efforts of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The large-scale conversion of the Slavs of Kievan Rus was mostly by Royal edict as alluded to in the Russian Primary Chronicles:

Thereafter Vladimir sent heralds throughout the whole city to proclaim that if any inhabitants, rich or poor, did not betake himself to the river, he would risk the Prince's displeasure. When the people heard these words, they wept for joy, and exclaimed in their enthusiasm, "If this were not good, the Prince and his boyars would not have accepted it." On the morrow, the Prince went forth to the Dnieper with the priests of the Princess and those from Kherson, and a countless multitude assembled.--Russian Primary Chronicles, page 116-117

Some note the missionaries were Ukrainians influenced by the Jesuits. Peter the Great ordered forced baptisms.

Taken from "Russia and the Small Peoples of the North Arctic Mirrors" by Yuri Slezkine

"...Force, however, was not to be used, and the first missionary expedition, unsupported by the secular authorities, was driven away by the Mansi. Greatly annoyed, Peter order Filofei to "find their seductive false-god idols and burn them with fire and ax them, and destroy their heathen temples, and build chapels instead of those temples, and put up the holy icons, and baptize these Ostiaks....And if some Ostiaks show themselves contrary to our great sovereign's decree, they will be punished by death."

"At the same time, Siberia was made a centralized gubernia, and its first governor, Prince M.P. Gagarin, arrived in Tobol'sk in 1711 with instructions to lend the missionaries a hand. A year later, the metropolitan [St Philotheus] had a ship, soldiers, interpreters, and gifts for the converts, and as he set out on his first large expedition, the future Christians were being rounded up, "so that these Ostiaks do not run away." In the course of the next decade Filofei Leshchinskii repeatedly "[tore] down the foundations of their idolatry, ruin[ed] their heathen temples, and demolish[ed] their idols." On reaching an Ugrian settlement a party of several monks and a dozen soldiers would go ashore, and "the teacher" would address the assembled villagers with a sermon on the advantaged of Christianity over paganism. An interpreter would translate his words, and the missionaries would proceed to burn "the idols and heathen temples." Having accomplished this, they would herd the villagers into the river for baptism, whereupon the "new Christians" would receive tin crosses, shirts, pants, bread, and other presents. Some Ugrians tried to flee, refused to leave their houses, or "covered their ears with their hands, like deaf vipers." Other attempted to bargain, anxious to keep their "many wives" and to place the images of their spirits "between the icons." A few attacked the missionaries "with a deadly hand." (According to Filofei's chronicler, the "teacher" himself was hit "in the belly" [chrevo] but escaped unhurt thanks to divine intervention.)  

In the long run, however, the threat of "punishment by death," the generous distribution of valuable gifts, and a number of special baptism benefits such as three years iasak waivers and pardons for minor criminals combined to ensure the apparent success of the enterprise, and in 1720 Peter congratulated Filofei on having baptized more than forth thousand pagans."--Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Yuri Slezkin. page 49-50. 2016.

Slezkine cites Monuments of Siberian History Pamiatniki sibirskoi istorii (PSI) Памятники Сибирской истории 1:413-414

"...книгахъ тое ихъ доимки вынести, чтобъ тѣмъ доимки не помянулись. А естли возиожно, то того ради исправленія, и самому тебѣ богомолцу нашему ѣхать въ вышеписанные мѣста и приводить тѣхъ идолопоклонниковъ во истинной ко христіянской вѣрѣ. А ко крещенію имъ кафтаны бѣлые и рубашки изъ нашей казны и хлѣбъ, по разсмотрѣнію, такожде давать увазали. А естли кто Остяки учинатъ противность сему нашему великого государя указу, и тѣмъ будетъ казнь смертная. А о споможеніи тебѣ въ томъ въ Тоболескъ къ воеводѣ Ивану Бибикову писано, что къ той посылкѣ, или къ вашему богомолца..."--Памятники Сибирской истории 1:413-414

Ostiak (ostyak) Остя́к is (actually was, as it's not a used word in modern Russian) an umbrella term for several indigenous peoples of Siberian that was common in this period.

Slezkine also has another book detailing Russian evangelization more

"At the same time, Siberia became a centralized guberniia, and its first governor, Prince M.P. Gagarin, arrived in Tobol'sk in 1711 with instructions to lend the missionaries a hand. In the ensuing campaign thousands of native Siberians received baptism along with pants, bread, knives, and temporary tribute exemptions, or else by being herded into the rivers at gunpoint. In 1750 archimandrite Ioasaf reported from Kachatka that "all the Kamchadal, expect for the Koriak who moved from one place to another farm away from Kamchatka, have been, by God's grace, baptized by holy baptism, taught, and brought into the faith according to Christ's grace and for that reason the cause of the preaching of the word of God has ended and there is no one left to be converted from paganism to the Christian Faith."-- Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture. page 17. Edited by G. Diment, Y. Slezkine.

Also, 

""Otherwise, the vigor of the routine enforcement of Christianity depended on the local priests. In 1747, for example, Father Pykov gave the following account of his activities:

In the last year of 1747, in the months of April and May, I beat the new Christian, Ostiak Fedor Senkin, with a whip, because he married his daughter off at the said time and celebrated the wedding feast during the first week of Lent. I also beat his...son-in-law with a whip, because he buried his deceased son himself, outside of the church and without the knowledge of the priest...Semen Kornilov Kortyshin was beaten with a whip because he never went to the holy church....I also beat the widow Marfa and her son Kozma with a whip...because....they kept in their tent a small stone idol, to whom they brought sacrifices,...and broke the said idol with an ax in front of an Ostiak gathering and threw the pieces in all directions.25"  

25. Ogryzko, Khristianizatsiia, p. 91

Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North By Yuri Slezkine. Page 51

Concerning claims the Russian Orthodox missionaries were different from the Spanish in not enslaving the indigenous, the book "Exile to Siberian" states:

"Despite the early guliashchie and a few other groups, European Russians dwelling patterns were for the most part replicated in Siberia. It is true that serfdom barely existed in Siberia, where almost all peasants were state peasants and therefore quite different from serfs, though it needs to be mentioned that monasteries such as the St Nikolai in Verkhotur'e, which obtained a land charter in 1622, and Tobol'sk's Sofiisk Monastery, chartered in 1628, did acquire serfs, in part by enserfing guliashchie liudi already living on what became their lands. Eventually, some 35 monasteries were established in Siberia (e.g. Dolmatov Uspenskii, Tobol'skii Znamneskii, Nev'ianskii Bogoiavlenskii), each of which obtained the right to enserf peasants on their lands, whether they were freemen or fugitive serfs. As of the early eighteenth century Siberian monasteries possessed 1,082 peasants households, and by 1762 owned more than 14,000 male serfs. Small numbers of privately owned serfs also existed in Siberia; but truly exceptional is an instruction dating from the mid-1640s in which Tsar Michael rules that the guliashscie Mishka Chashchin and Seluianko Nikonov be assigned to debt servitudes (kabala) in Verkhotur's uezd. All of which is to say that even if the typical Siberian peasant was more economically autonomous than his European Russian counterpart, he tended like him to live within a village commune that dictated both his existence and Weltanschauung."--Exile to Siberia: 1590-1822 by Andrew A. Gentes. Page 27

Nominal converts:

"In the 1720s, the missionary effort of the Russian state began to take on another dimension. Although the number of converts continued to grow on paper, reports from the field lamented the fact that the conversions were only nominal and that the converts remained ignorant of Christianity and did not observe any of its precepts. It was becoming more apparent that reliance on sheer force or legislative discrimination to effect conversions was not sufficient. --Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia

https://books.google.com/books?id=5pRlDwAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&q=beliefs+took+their+sacred&hl=en&source=newbks_fb#v=onepage&q&f=false

The above does not even address the issue of forced conversion under the Roman Emperor, especially the Eastern/Byzantine emperors, forced conversion of Jews in north Africa witnessed by St Maximus the Confessors in Carthage in AD 632 (then part of the Eastern Empire), the burning of the Bogomil 'pope' Basil the Physician in the early 12th century by Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, inquisitions against Judaizers and old believers in Russia following the synod of 1666 with Patriarch Nikon. Many of these activities mirrored the abuses of 'conversion' in the West but are seldom spoken of.