I read an interesting book on this a year or two ago, recommended by Josh Gates: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mountain-Untold-Dyatlov-Incident/dp/1452112746
It was the conclusion of Dead Mountain that the popular theories of avalanche, government conspiracy, failed weapon test, UFO, yeti, ice elves (an actual theory some people have), and attack by native people are all varying degrees of unlikely based on evidence from the investigation that was done at the time and based on the author's own investigation ~2010.
The theory he eventually decided fit best was that the shape of the mountain paired with the speed/direction of wind going around it was capable of generating sounds that are below the human hearing threshold (ie very low frequency) but which can cause discomfort and potentially panic in humans. Sounds kind of crazy, but studies like this and this have been recently done on infrasound, usually in the context of wind farms.
The theory goes that infrasound was generated by wind blowing across a mountain and induced a state of panic in the hikers. They thought an avalanche was approaching because of the weird sense of foreboding they had and fled the tent, rushing as fast as they could to get away from danger. Many didn't properly put on cold weather gear (it was night, so they were in their sleeping clothes), and someone cut open the back side of the tent in order to get out more quickly. After that, hypothermia and death.
This picture? An avalanche would've blasted the tent away, not just collapsed it. That looks to me like an issue of natural snowfall/wind: the tent had been left unattended for a while. The incident happened February 1, and that picture wasn't taken until February 26. On a mountain in the Russian wilderness during winter, I would say the tent looks remarkably intact.
Most of my information is from Dead Mountain, but from what I've read the conditions on the mountain made an avalanche very unlikely. There was a mountain nearby that was steeper and might have generated occasional avalanches, but the group was made up of very experienced hikers who carefully chose their camping spot with safety in mind and would've known what to look for.