It's a mixed bag
Some places experienced collapse due to corruption such as Venezuela and hyper inflation- you could call these economic and there are several variances in cause, effect and timescale.
Others experienced collapse due to famine, disease or foreign invaders being too powerful.
In the case of Russia you can look at how policy effected the soviets or you can go furthur back to see how political philosphy shook things up from when tsar nicolas ii and his family were murdered and lenin took power, the policy differences between him and Stalin, the escalation of occurances in russia with the bolsheviks and the societal implications of a changing ideology about basic rights and wrongs and the very structure of their culture- it could be vehicles of control such as neighbors informing on each other's or extreme events such as the holodomor under the commies or the holocaust under the fascists.... in which case its not exactly a case of the government collapase but instead a case where individuals are persecuted for their beliefs/identity
Sometimes governments fail incredibly, and populations just starve such as china's "great leap forward". We saw cannibalism and civil unrest due to nothing more than poor organization, and therefore resource shortages concerning daily necessities.
In all cases, outliers survive and thrive depending on how they insulate themselves (such as basic escape) form the vulnerabilities of the masses.
It becomes pretty complicated. It's not a simple as the government collapses and **** gets harder for people overal, infact often the government collapsing makes things easier for certain groups and thise groups due to their own interests are the benefactors and immediate sponsors of the government collapse- sometimes the groups that benefit are criminal, some times those groups are just "end of the roaders" who are too far out into the peripherals of society to be effected.
It could be a slow decay due to overtaxatiom/regulation it could be an overdue uprising like in shri-lanka or an insurgency sponsored by foreign powers such as Rhodesia.
A survivalist should in my opinion be capable of surviving without the government, and a
good survivalist should be prepared to survive
in spite of the government. The methodology varies, but the general basis is self-reliance.
Every system has vulnerabilities, be it governments or individuals. The key is keeping it relevant to you. I don't think this discussion can be distilled to a few simple maxims and bundled up with a nice bow on it- its about as messy as anything human.