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The Second World is a Western term referring to the former socialist industrial states (formally the Eastern Bloc), mostly the territory and area under the influence of the Soviet Union. Following World War II, there were nineteen communist states, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, only four socialist states remained: China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. Along with "First World" and "Third World", the term was used to divide the states of Earth into three broad categories.
The concept of "Second World" was a construct of the Cold War and the term has largely fallen out of use since the revolutions of 1989, although it is still used to describe countries that are in between poverty and prosperity, many of which are now capitalist states. Subsequently, the actual meaning of the terms "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" changed from being based on political ideology to an economic definition.[1] The three world theory has been criticized as crude and relatively outdated for its nominal ordering (1, 2, 3) and sociologists have coined the term "developed", "developing", and "underdeveloped" as replacement terms for global stratification—nevertheless, the three world theory is still popular in contemporary literature and media. This might also cause semantic variation of the term between describing a region's political entities and its people.[2]
Eastern Bloc, Soviet Union, Vietnam War, Berlin Wall, United States
East Germany, Berlin Wall, Soviet Union, People's Republic of Bulgaria, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Cold War, Battle of Stalingrad, Nazi Germany, Battle of the Atlantic, Second Sino-Japanese War
World War II, Russia, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian language, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic
Hanoi, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand
Nato, Cold War, Canada, Globalization, United States
Non-Aligned Movement, Cold War, World Bank, First World, Second World
World Bank, Togo, Sudan, International Monetary Fund, Afghanistan
Mexico, International Monetary Fund, China, India, South Africa
United Nations, Samoa, Vanuatu, Maldives, Kiribati