The essay deals with the global historical development of the human rights doctrine and its role in modern politics from a Czech, Czechoslovak and East-Central European point of view. It draws on recent revisionist historiography of human rights the main characteristic of which, described at the beginning of the essay, is the reconstruction of the human rights doctrine as an epiphenomenon of major historical political conflicts. Then, the author turns to the comeback of human rights as a universalistic concept during the Second World War and the Allied struggle against Nazism. He continues with tracing down the general development during the Cold War leading to the promotion of human rights as a part of binding international law since the mid-1970s. Further, the Czechoslovak postwar situation is analysed starting with the Stalinist Constitution of 1948 up to the dissident struggle for human and civil rights during the last two decades of the communist dictatorship. The last part of the essay examines the rise of liberal internationalism and humanitarian interventionism in the post-1989 period and strives to specify the Czechoslovak and Czech development within a broader context, fi nishing with a plea for understanding human rights as a space for political deliberation, dialogue and contest.