The social conflicts related to Finland’s independence did not escalate in Kuusamo in the same way as in Southern Finland, where they broke out as armed battles between the working population and the bourgeoisie at the end of January 1918. Around the same time, White Guard was established in Kuusamo, which organized calls to recruit soldiers for the white army. The most active members of the labour association founded at the beginning of the century went across the border to White Sea Karelia. There, many joined the Murmansk railway workers in the armed group, which was planning an attack from the north against the rear of the Finnish white army.
However, Kuusamo knew how to prepare for the reds’ plan. After a couple of battles in White Sea Karelia, the reds retreated to the edge of the Murmansk track, while the white troops remained to guard the border. However, the state of war in White Sea Karelia continued. The Finnish reds joined the British army there as mercenaries and started guarding the border. The British who had disembarked in White Sea Karelia foresaw a possibility that Germany, which had come to aid the Finnish white army, could try to conquer of Russia, which was shaken by the revolution. The British army’s operations in White Sea Karelia continued until the end of the First World War in the fall of 1919. At that time, the troops withdrew from White Sea Karelia, as did most of the Finnish mercenaries who got to go home on an English ship. Hundreds of Kuusamo men were with the different parties in these commotions, in the red expedition, in the British forces in the Murmansk legion and in the ranks of the Finnish whites in different parts of White Sea Karelia.
The unrest across the border was still felt in Kuusamo in 1921-1922. When the Bolsheviks began to punish the White Sea Karelians who wanted to break away from Soviet Russia, they began to resist. The Bolsheviks defeated the White Sea Karelians, and twenty thousand White Sea Karelians fled to Finland, several thousand via Kuusamo. Most of them moved from Kuusamo to other parts of Finland, some later after receiving amnesty returned to White Sea Karelia. However, many refugees from White Sea Karelia stayed permanently in Kuusamo.