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Aplastun orplastoon (Ukrainian,Russian:пластун) was aCossack footscouting andsentrymilitary unit.[1] Originally, they were part of theBlack Sea Cossack Host and then later in the 19th and 20th centuriesKuban Cossack Host.
The tradition of foot scouts, vanguard troops, and ambushes, together with the termplastuny, belong to the early Cossack history of theZaporizhian Sich and mentioned, e.g., byVladimir Dahl in hisExplanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language. Plastun foot units were introduced during theRussian-Circassian War to guard and scout beyond the "Kuban Line", a frontier in theKuban plains, against suddenCircassian raids.
Later, the name "plastoon regiments" was applied to all Cossackinfantry. In theRussian Imperial Army, whole plastun regiments were formed. Normally, Cossacks had to buy their horses andhorse tack with their own money, and plastuns did not have these expenses. Despite this, regular plastun units were not popular, since they did not fit the traditional notion of Cossack pride. Therefore, plastun units tended to consist of poorer people.[2]
The term was revived in theSoviet Army during theGreat Patriotic War and used in the names of several Cossackbattalions andregiments. The only plastun Cossack division of that time was the9th Krasnodar Plastun Division, which fought in Northern Caucasus, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and was one of the elite Soviet military units. Germans called them "Stalin's cutthroats". At the same time, "plastun" (i.e., infantry) regiments existed in the Cossack military that fought on the German side, in the15th SS Cossack Cavalry Corps.
The name derives from the wordplast, "sheet" via an expression "to lay like a sheet", i.e., flat and low. The word "plastoon" also can refer to a member of a Ukrainianscouting organizationPlast, named after the original plastoons.