The project is a social and cultural history of the region at war, asking how the conflict affected the region and, in turn, how the Soviet empire was transformed. The first book focuses on military recruitment, conscription, combat experiences, post-war returns, veterans, and war memory in late-Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia. The second examines the Central Asian home front, including civilian evacuation, economic production, the impact of deprivation on families, and cultural production in support of the war effort. The project is unique in scope and focus, being the only of its kind to tell a people’s history of the war from a regional perspective – rather than via the national lens, and in broadening its chronology to ask about the long-term impacts of the war.