Second World
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Image:Secondworld-extended.png
The terms First World, Second World, and Third World, can be used to divide the nations of Earth into three broad categories. The term "Second World" has largely fallen out of use because the circumstances to which it referred largely ended with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and also because the popularity of its sister phrase "Third World" has divided the world between rich and poor in many people's minds.
History
The three terms did not arise simultaneously. After World War II, people began to speak of the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries as two major blocs, often using such terms as the "Western bloc" and the "Eastern bloc". The two "worlds" were not numbered. It was eventually pointed out that there were a great many countries that fit into neither category, and in the 1950s this latter group came to be called the Third World. It then began to seem that there ought to be a "First World" and a "Second World".
Eventually, it became common practice (though not in the United Kingdom and only infrequently in the United States) to refer to nations within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence (e.g. the Warsaw Pact countries) as the Second World. Besides the Soviet Union proper, most of Eastern Europe was run by satellite governments working closely with Moscow. The term "Second world" may or may not also refer to Communist countries whose leadership were at odds with Moscow, i.e., Albania, China and Yugoslavia.
There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this neat partitioning of the world, including Switzerland, Sweden, and the Republic of Ireland, who chose to remain neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence but was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact. Austria was within the United States' sphere of influence, but in 1955, when it became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral. Yugoslavia, a communist east European country, was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Albania was a communist east European country which withdrew from the Warsaw Pact over ideological differences in 1968 and had stopped supporting the Pact as early as 1962.
Alternatively, First World countries may be defined as having developed market economies, Second World as having developed planned economies, and Third World as having developing economies that may follow either the market or (less often) the planned model, often characterized more by many features in common with feudalistic economies, than by either free-market or planned economies.
Similar terms
In recent years, as many "developing" countries have industrialized, the term Fourth World has been coined to refer to countries that have lagged behind and still lack industrial infrastructure. It is also used for those inhabitants of the First World living in Third-World conditions.
Alternatively, Fourth World can also be used to describe nations with no visible industry, but rather their economy relying on oil production.
The term "Second Superpower" in spite of its similarity refers to civil society rather than the Soviet Union.
See also
de:Zweite Welt nl:Tweede Wereld pl:Drugi Świat pt:Segundo mundo sk:Druhý svet sv:Andra världen zh:第二世界