Thread: Different forms of "united"

Can someone explain to me the differences in the Russian terms for "united?" I know of at least three forms. There's the Организация Объединённых Наций (United Nations). I live in the Соединённые Штаты Америки (USA). And the most prominent political party in Russia right now is Единая Россия(United Russia). Anybody care to clarify this a bit?

Originally Posted by Barmaley

Can someone explain to me the differences in the Russian terms for "united?" I know of at least three forms. There's the Организация Объединённых Наций (United Nations). I live in the Соединённые Штаты Америки (USA). And the most prominent political party in Russia right now is Единая Россия(United Russia). Anybody care to clarify this a bit?

соединенный and объединенный have generally the same meaning, but соединенный is closer to "connected", объединенный - "as a whole".
единый is a stronger term than соединенный or объединенный, because it depicts the fact of being one single entity, not just that the process of unification took place (which is the meaning of соединенный and объединенный)

Generally, adjectives have stronger meaning than synonymous passive perfective participles (because adjective represents an attribute of the object itself while pass. perf. participle - result of an action on the object):
освобожденный - свободный
автоматизированный - автоматический
загрязненный - грязный
очищенный - чистый

OK, I think I understand how единый differs -- the idea inferred is that Russia is already one unit, that won't be split (due to its solidarity), rather than something that previously had been separate regions that were unified. I'm still a bit hazy on the other two, but your explanation did help -- соединенный would always just mean a stronger connection than объединённый (obviously in this example, the difference is that the США is made up of unified units that chose to come together, whereas the ООН is simply a group of members coming together for forming a body)?

To ask a hypothetical, assume tomorrow the ООН was dissolved and a new organization was formed -- would it sound nonsensical to call it the ОСН, then or would that simply mean that it was basically a centralized one-world government?

One final question -- in the case of ЕР would you say that given the meaning of единый it's better to call it "Unified Russia" than "United Russia?" I have seen "unified" on occasion -- but this doesn't mean it's a less accurate translation. Thanks, and sorry to pile on the questions.

Соединять means to attach something to something. It usually implies some sort of locking action, e.g. glue or a screw, or simply parts have hooks of some sort that come into lock as is the case with railway carriges.

Объединять on the other hand doesn't strongly imply this locking action. In my view it assumes some sort of collection, gathering together, etc...

WRT unified vs. united for ЕР, unified would be wrong translation. Unified Russia would sound offensive for many because it would mean shaving everyone or every region to the same standard, in other words destroying all the differences between all the different cultures/nations currently living in Russia...

MikeM is totally correct. Unified might mean унифицированный that also might mean unimodal, unitized, standardized, normalized, uniformed, etc.
унифицированный - по единому образцу

Единый could mean integrated, merged, joint, solid, unitary, many-in-one, one-for-many, inseparable, ironclad, etc.

соединенный migh stand for associated, linked up, connected, assembled, related, an so on
объединенный might mean included, part of.

so in some sence they mean the same: something that consists of parts, assembled, joint...

Thank you all for your responses; they were quite helpful.

Can't one think of объединённый as UNIFIED, соединенный as UNITED and единый as ONE

So the "United Nations" is a unification of nations
"United States" is a bunch of states united together
"Единая Россия" could be thought as "One Russia" or "Russia as One"

Just to amplify the shades of meaning