Initially, the countries of the Third World were those states that did not take sides 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.
History of the term
On March 5, 1946, the Cold War began - the confrontation between the USSR and the United States in geopolitical, ideological, economic and military issues. Each side had its 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 side of the United States.
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 deployment of a real war, but it never came to that, and in 1991, due to the collapse of the USSR, the cold war ended.
Since the early years of the Cold War, countries not participating in this confrontation have been called the third world. It was the arena of political action on both sides: NATO and the Internal Affairs Directorate vied 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 scholar compared the third world to the third estate in society. And already in 1980, the countries of the third world began to call those in which there was a low income among the population. Although since that time, some of these states have managed not only to escape from the third world, but also to overtake the second, socialist world in economic development, and the former states of developed socialism have entered a difficult time.
Third World countries
Today, according to the UN terminology, all developing states are called countries of the third world - that is, those that cannot be ranked among the developed industrial world. This is a rather subjective characteristic: some have a very backward economy - Togo, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Guiana, Guatemala, Tahiti, others have a good level of development - the Philippines, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Peru.
But all these countries have several common characteristics that allow them to be united. Firstly, they all have a colonial period in their history - that is, they were ever captured by world powers. The consequences of this time are still reflected in their culture, economics and politics. Secondly, in such countries, even despite the developed industrial activity, pre-industrial types of production coexist with it. Many sectors of the national economy are unequally developed. Third, the state actively intervenes in the economy in order to accelerate the rate of growth - this process is called statism.
