How to read papers of professors? This is a question that has been in my mind for a month now. I am a final year M.Sc student in mathematics and applying for graduate school this year. But for applying to graduate schools, let's say in Europe, it is recommended that you should study the papers of Professors to whom you are applying. My question is how to go about reading the papers? Let's say I am interested in doing research on a particular topic (let's say X) and I have only taken a basic course on that topic X. I should have done my M.Sc thesis in X but in my university, nobody is working on X. Also, I didn't know I am interested in X until the last year otherwise I would have done some internships on this topic. With this background, there is no way I could understand the papers of a Professor who is working on the subject X for years. This is certainly not a problem in the US as you don't have to apply to a Professor, but in Europe, I think in most of the cases, you have to directly apply to a Professor. So, what to do in this case? 

Thanks in advance!
Sorry for my bad English.
Don't expect to understand the whole paper. Many researchers won't manage that either anyway, without a fair amount of time. Read the introduction. That should be written in simpler/less technical words, and give you an idea of what's going on. If that's still too hard, identify the main words in the title/abstract, and see if there are corresponding articles of Wikipedia (which isn't reliable enough to quote, but in many areas is actually pretty accurate).