Kolpashevsky Yar, the high bank of the Ob river within the Kolpashevo town limits, is the site of mass burial for those shot or who died in the NKVD prison for the Narymsky district. From 1932 to 1944, before and after the Great Terror (1937-1938), executions were also carried out there. Those shot were buried in pits in a designated section of the prison courtyard.

In May 1979 the river changed course. The burials were washed away, and the remains were carried downstream. To prevent publicity the authorities destroyed both the remains and signs of the burial. In 1990, in response to a joint statement by Tomsk and Novosibirsk Memorial Societies, the Chief Military Prosecutor opened a criminal investigation into the desecration of the bodies, but it was closed in 1992 “for lack of a corpus delicti”.

According to the Tomsk Memorial Society 4,000 people were executed in Kolpashevo during the Terror. In 1990 one list of 1,445 names was handed to the Kolpashevo museum from the Novosibirsk Region KGB. Memorials placed on the river bank in 1990-2000 were also washed away. In the early 2000s a foundation stone was laid in a square in Kolpashevo, bearing the inscription, “Here will stand a memorial to the victims of repression in the 1930s-1950s”.