Dobrovolsky, Volkov, & Patsayev died because they weren't wearing pressure suits, just cloth flight suits. The Soviet space program had first eschewed pressure suits during Voskhod 1, when it was necessary to forego pressure suits in order to cram three cosmonauts into the capsule to one-up the Americans, who were preparing to launch the two-man Gemini spacecraft. Had the Soyuz 11 trio been wearing pressure suits, they would have survived the depressurization of their capsule; had the Soyuz 10 trio been wearing pressure suits, cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov would not have been overcome by toxic fumes during re-entry. The American Space Shuttle program would similarly forego pressure suits from the first "operational" flight, S.T.S.-5, through the Challenger disaster, S.T.S.-51-L. In the immediate aftermath of Soyuz 11, the crews of Apollo 15, Apollo 16, & Apollo 17 wore their pressure suits for more phases of their missions than had the preceeding Apollo crews.
At the time, though, the Soviets did not disclose the cause of the death of the cosmonauts & there was speculation, especially among the press, that the cosmonauts had exceeded the human body's ability to perdure in the microgravity of outer space. This cast doubt on N.A.S.A.'s ambitions for the upcoming Skylab space station, though N.A.S.A.'s flight surgeons were convinced that spending too much time in microgravity was not the cause of death. They were proven right, as the Skylab missions & subsequent experience with Mir & the Intenational Space Station have demonstrated. The Soviets eventually revealed asphyxiation as the cause of death & spent two years redesigning the Soyuz capsule to accommodate two cosmonauts in pressure suits instead of three cosmonauts in flight suits. Too late to save Dobrovolsky, Volkov, & Patsayev, but at least learning the lesson of their deaths means they had not died in vain.
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