Initially, the countries of the Third World were called those states that did not take any side in the Cold War. These were the countries of Central and South America, Africa, India, the island states of Indonesia and others. Today, the same territory is called the Third World, implying their economic backwardness.
Term history
On March 5, 1946, the Cold War began - the confrontation between the USSR and the USA in geopolitical, ideological, economic and military issues. Each side had its own allies: the Soviet Union cooperated with Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, China, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Mongolia and many other countries, and many European countries, Japan, Thailand, Israel, Turkey took the US side.
Only about a hundred states participated in this confrontation, which cannot be considered a war in the generally accepted sense of the word. The confrontation was accompanied by an arms race, at certain points in time there were situations that threatened the unfolding of a real war, but it never came to that, and in 1991, in connection with the collapse of the USSR, the Cold War stopped.
From the first years of the Cold War, countries not participating in this confrontation were called the Third World. It was an arena of political action on both sides: NATO and the ATS competed among themselves for influence in these territories. Although already in 1952 this term was first used in its modern meaning - as undeveloped, economically backward states and territories.
One French scientist compared the third world to the third estate in society. And already in 1980, the countries of the Third World began to be called those in which there was a low income among the population. Although since then, some of these states have managed to not only break out of the third world, but also overtake the second, socialist world in economic development, and the former states of developed socialism entered a difficult time.
