| Eastern Bloc | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||||||
Allied and satellite states
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
Cold War events
| ||||||||
TheSecond World was one of the "Three Worlds" formed by the global political landscape of theCold War, as it grouped together those countries that were aligned with theEastern Bloc of theSoviet Union and allies inWarsaw Pact. This grouping was directly opposed to theFirst World, which similarly grouped together those countries that were aligned with theWestern Bloc of theUnited States and allies inNATO. It includedcommunist states that were originally under theSoviet sphere of influence, though some eventually broke away from the Soviet ideology (e.g.,Yugoslavia's split andChina's split) to develop their own path associalist states while retaining their communist governments. Most communist states remained under Soviet influence until theRevolutions of 1989. In 1991, upon thedissolution of the Soviet Union, only five communist states remained:China,Cuba,Laos,North Korea, andVietnam. Though the terms "First World" and "Third World" continue to see present-day relevance in colloquial speech, albeit with a repurposed definition, the term "Second World" is obsolete outside of a Cold War context.
The concept of "Second World" was a construct of theCold War and the term is still largely used to describe former communist countries that are between poverty and prosperity, many of which are nowcapitalist states, such as Eastern Europe. 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on political ideology to an economic definition.[1] The three-world theory has been criticized as crude and relatively outdated for its nominal ordering, and some sociologists have instead used the words "developed", "developing", and "underdeveloped" as replacement terms for global stratification (which have been criticized as displaying a colonialist mindset);[2] 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.[3]
The Three Worlds Model was used to rank the development of countries and their economies during the Cold War. First World countries werecapitalist and industrial; they shared similar political and economic institutions, and retained influence over parts of the former colonial world. Second World countries advocatedsocialism and shared certain characteristics such as centrally planned economic systems, single-party states, and mainly medium income levels.[4] The First World and the Second World were competing for political and economic influence over developing nations known as the Third World.
TheHuman Development Index is an index used to rank countries and is quantified by looking at a country's human development such as life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators. The scale is 0–1 and they are put into one of four categories; 0-.55 is low, .55-.70 is medium, .70-.80 is high and very high tops out at .80–1.0. The Second World countries from the Cold War era currently range from medium human development to very high human development in terms of HDI.[5]
Some examples of Cold-War definition Second World countries wereBulgaria,Czechoslovakia,Hungary,Mongolia,North Korea,Poland,Romania, theSoviet Union, and theGerman Democratic Republic.
The powerful economies of the West are still sometimes described as "First World", but the term "Second World" became largelyobsolete following the collapse of the Soviet Union.[6]
second world countries communist.
Economic classification of countries | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three/Four-World Model | |||||
| Gross domestic product (GDP) |
| ||||
| Gross national income andIncome | |||||
| Wages andsalary | |||||
| Wealth | |||||
| Othernational accounts | |||||
| Human development | |||||
| Digital divide | |||||
| Net international investment position (NIIP) | |||||
