Kopatkevichi is located in the Minsk province of Belarus, 35 kilometers from Petrikov, 63 kilometers from Mozyr, and 179 kilometers from Gomel.

The first printed mention of Kopatkevichi appears in 1568. However, people settled in Kopatkevichi much earlier. Archeological excavations, such as an 1889 excavation by Belarussian archeologist U. Zavitnevich, have confirmed the antiquity of Kopatkevichi. The town went by the names Kapatkevichi, Kapatkovichi, and Kapytkavichi, among others. The most ancient form of the name is Kapytkovichi, meaning children of Kapytok or Kaptka.

In 1568, Kopatkevichi lay within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1569, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland joined to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1768, Kopatkevichi came into the possession of landowner Rafail Yalenski. After the 1793 division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Austria, Prussia, and Russia, the Minsk district, and with it Kopatkevichi, became part of the Russian Empire. Kopatkevichi lay within the Russian Empire's "Pale of Settlement," within which Jews were permitted to live. Under Russian Empire administrative divisions, Kopatkevichi was in the Mozyr volost (district), of the Minsk gubernia (province).

In 1863, Belarussians, Lithuanians and Poles revolted against the Russian authorities in an attempt to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Anton Paulavich Yalenski, landholder of Kopatkevichi, become a leader of the revolt in the Minsk province. He was arrested on June 1, 1863, and was condemned for 15 years of penal servitude in Siberia. Upon his arrest, the authorities confiscated Kopatkevichi. From 1863-68 the town was state property, and in 1868 it was transferred to the ownership of a Russian general named Tsilov.

Jews played a central role in Kopatkevichi and nearby shtetls and towns. The center of Jewish life was the synagogue, in which hundreds gathered on Shabbat and holidays. Jews in Kopatkevichi were tailors, shoemakers, glovemakers, mechanics, joiners, bakers, butchers, weavers, and blacksmiths, among other crafts and trades. Kopatkevichi's Jews also participated in the sphere of services, such as owning small bars (called carchma) and in trade. Jewish political parties such as the Bund were active in the town. In 1897, Russian authorities organized a national census, which showed that 1,768 people lived in Kopatkevichi and that 1,310 of them were Jews.

Kopatkevichi began the 20th century as home to a cheder, an orthodox high school, and public schools. After the Russian Revolution in February 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power and created the Soviet Union. Then, in World War I, Kopatkevichi was occupied by the German army in 1918. On September 15, 1918, Bolshevik partisans led by Iona Kuz'mich re-established Soviet authority in Kopatkevichi. In February 1919, the Polish army seized Kopatkevichi, and the town was under its authority until July 12, 1920. For several days in June of 1921, Kopatkevichi was under the control of the "national volunteer army" of Stanislau Bulak-Bulachovich. The gangs of Bulak-Bulachovich organized many devastating pogroms in Kopatkevichi and surrounding areas, specifically targeting Jews.

On June 9, 1921, over 100 armed gangsters rushed into the nearby village of Luchitsy and killed members of the district Bolshevik executive committee and two militiamen. The next day, the mob was directed to Kopatkevichi, where they brought a bloody massacre as a result of which 120 Jews were killed and 35 were wounded. A local newspaper, The Bolshevik, recorded that "They beat everybody who came into their hands, showing mercy neither to women nor old men. Some Jewish families, for example the families of Antsula Ginsburg, Binjamin Shapiro, David Shapiro, and others were completely destroyed. The shtetl's streets are filled up with corpses, are filled with blood. Everyone who could saved themselves by escaping." The newspaper reported that the murderers cut off body parts and forced victims to drink acid.

After the war, local Jewry experienced all the restrictions of the Bolshevik regime: the closing of the synagogue, prohibition of spiritual life, and persecution of private trade. At the same time, the authorities opened Jewish schools in Yiddish, and for several years in the 1920's, Yiddish was recognized as an official state language.

In 1924, the town of Kopatkevichi became the center of the Kopatkevichi region of the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic. A list of places in the B.S.S.R. in 1924 reports that there were 2,774 inhabitants in Kopatkevichi proper, but does not provide the number of Jews. By 1936 there were about 36,600 people in the larger Kopatkevichi region. The second half of the 1930's saw the peak years of Stalin's reprisals, and Kopatkevichi also suffered from this oppressive policy.

In 1938, Kopatkevichi had a power station, radio center, bakery, regional shop, children's garden, maternity house, and a "house of socialist culture." The local collective farm was called "Leninskaya Iskra" ("Lenin's spark"). Local newspapers provide many details of life at that time. For example, The Bolshevik reported that on 27th of December, 1938, Yankel and G.A. Kwetny were 30 minutes late to work at a tanning factory in Kopatkevichi, so they were dismissed from their job and called saboteurs.

Just before the start of the second World War, the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact. On the 1st of September, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and WWII began. On the 17th of September, the Red Army entered Western Belarus and incorporated it into the BSSR and USSR. The authorities organized a campaign for aid to the population of Western Belarus, and the inhabitants of Kopatkevichi were quite active in this campaign: M. Kot, the school youth chief of a communist youth group, wrote in The Bolshevik on October 24, 1939, that Kopatkevich schoolboys sent the children of Western Belarus 1,500 rubles worth of textbooks and portraits of Soviet leaders.

On June 22, 1941, the Nazis invaded the USSR. The next day, a crowd of people gathered near the Kopatkevichi military commissariat, hoping to fight the enemy. The Germans occupied Kopatkevichi on August 1, 1941, and they incorporated it into the structure of the Mazyr gebitkomissariat, under the reichkomissariat Ukraine. During the occupation the Kopatkevichi region lost 2,897 inhabitants. Nearly all the local Jews were killed.

Kopatkevichi was the first regional center of Belarus to be liberated by the partisans. On December 17, 1942, partisans under the direction of S.V. Makhan'ko took Kopatkevichi from the Germans. The Red Army entered Kopatkevichi on June 30, 1944.

Today, Kopatkevichi is small settlement. Since 1962 it has been in the administrative district of Petrykau. In April 1986, the Chernobyl power station exploded and sent radioactive pollution to Kopatkevichi and the surrounding areas. In 1997, the population of Kopatkevichi was approximately 4,400, and the town was home to a hospital, library, schools, and an advanced food-processing industry. Nearly all the surviving Jews from Kopatkevichi have immigrated to Israel or other countries.