Kolpashevo (Russian: Колпа́шево) is a town and the administrative center of Kolpashevsky District in Tomsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Ob River.
[citation needed] During the Great Purge, Kolpashevo was the site of mass executions carried out by the NKVD, with the corpses of those executed being disposed of in mass graves.
In May 1979 meandering of the Ob river caused a mass grave containing more than 1,000 mummified corpses to become exposed.
Yegor Ligachev, the provincial party chief, took charge of a cover-up operation to destroy the mass grave using tugs, and used the KGB to coerce local people to dispose of the corpses by sinking them, although some corpses turned up in the sluiceway of a sawmill downstream, mixed with logs floated downstream.
Precipitation is moderate and is somewhat higher in summer than at other times of the year.