Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

Eichar meets with Yudin again. When Yudin was a young man, a lot of music was banned in the USSR, especially foreign music. Young people often carried portable record players, on which they played pirated records hand-engraved onto old X-ray film, all the while aware that there could be consequences for their actions. Yudin enjoyed his youth despite these challenges, as it was possible to live cheaply. Eichar is surprised when Yudin tells him that he hated Lenin, but thought “that Stalin did the right thing and that he was a great man” (140). Yudin describes Igor Dyatlov as a bit dictatorial in his own right, always making decisions for the entire hiking group. Some people have suggested that the hikers might have died after having a fight, but Yudin vehemently disagrees. He thinks that armed military personnel forced the hikers out of their tent and staged their deaths in the snow, brutalizing some of them before killing them. Lyuda’s body showed the worst signs of injury, and her tongue was missing. She was strong-willed, so Yudin thinks her murderers punished her by cutting out her tongue. Yudin also claims that one of her belongings, a small hedgehog toy, was never found.