The problem of the Millennium in Dostoevsky’s thought

The purpose of the research is to demonstrate Dostoevsky’s orthodox Christian concept of the Millennium by studying references to it in comparison to various interpretation of the notion. The research is novel in that it offers an innovative contextualization of the “Millennium” within a broad landscape of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, in the orthodox ecclesiastical perspective, and in non-orthodox outlooks of various religious traditions; consequently, the “Millennium” is reconceptualized as a term used by Dostoevsky’s characters to denote a chiliastic social notion, while Dostoevsky himself viewed millennium is present in the Church as the Body of Christ. Our findings demonstrate that the previously suggested interpretation of Dostoevsky’s millennial views did not account for the full spectrum of millennial references in Dostoevsky’s works and for a complex set of religious conceptualizations (postmillenarian, premillenarian, and amillenarian interpretations); consequently, Dostoevsky was ascribed essentially non-orthodox views of his characters, while the writer himself adhered to an orthodox ecclesiastical concept of the Millennium as we make clear upon considering this concept against the expanded background of relevant references in both his fiction and his non-fiction texts.