Always at the forefront of every major Soviet operation were the razvedchiki, the recon scouts of the Red Army. They were the elite d’corps of the Red Army, taking the role of both special forces and reconnaissance units. Every large infantry or armor force had a complement of scouts to help lead the rest of the unit in to combat. Scout platoons were well-equipped and always had the first pick on weapons, uniforms, gear, and food.
Scouts were the ubiquitous soldiers of the Red Army, fulfilling multiple roles that the other, more “modern” armies of the time period developed specific units for.
Every Soviet rifle regiment had a scout platoon as the commander’s eyes and ears on the battlefield, and every division had a scout company to further aid the scouts found within the regiment platoons. The soldiers of the scout platoons and companies were usually hand picked for their field craft and fighting ability. Officially scout platoons were 52 men strong at the start of the war on the Eastern Front, but the difficulty in finding suitable candidates and the desperate shortage of soldiers meant that the platoon quickly drooped in strength until the official complement was just over twenty scouts.The detailed organization of these units is unclear, and was probably very different between units depending on circumstances. It appears that a full strength scout platoon had two squads of nine scouts in its most common form. However, the Red Army had a policy of rebuilding entire divisions rather than feeding in replacements piecemeal, so like any unit in the Red Army, scout platoons were unlikely to remain at full strength for long.