The Russian Revolution. What happened? Why was it important?

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Russian Revolution
Introduction
On March 12th 1918 in the Julian calendar, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. Russia for the first time in 300 years had a person not of the Romanov royal family heading the country. His abdication was not voluntary, rather Nicholas II had been ousted by his people with the help of the parliamentary system he had set up known as duma. The abdication of the king marked the end of the first phase of the Russian revolution. Nearly eight months later, the provisional government which had seized power from the king was overthrown marking the second and the end of the Russian revolution. The Russian revolution is one of the most influential political upheavals of the 20th century was the Russian revolution. It ended the centuries-old Romanov monarchial rule and was replaced by a communist government. Leading to the two major revolutions that instituted the Soviet Union, tensions had been rising for over a decadeCITATION Han15 \p 76 \l 1033 (Dalton 76). This essay will attempt to explicate what caused the revolution, how it happened and its importance to Russian and world history.
What happened
The revolution was decades in the making. First, the monarchy had abolished serfdom which had stifled development in the country and made it lag behind other European countries. Serfdom was the Russian feudalism where the land is owned by nobility and the other landless people are forced to serve the land-owners. Thus, when serfdom was abolished, the country had a new crop of farmers who could now organize themselves and call for reforms. Russia had fallen behind the wave of industrialism and most of its economy was supported by agriculture. However, the machinery and other important factors of production were absent and therefore the monarchy continued to be largely undeveloped and grappling with relatively higher poverty levels compared with her neighbors.
Since the agriculture-based economy could not spearhead development. People flocked into cities to try their luck in the industries. The population of St. Petersburg doubled in this period and other cities across the vast country also experienced a surge in immigrants to their city. Due to overcrowding and low production owing to Russia’s involvement in war such as the Crimean was and poor agricultural production, the people started uprising towards the government. The people in the cities took to the streets to demonstrate due to the frequent food shortages that combed through the empire. The Russian monarchy empire responded by shooting the peaceful demonstrators. Many unarmed people were killed by the Tsar troops and sparked empire-wide strikes and boycotting in solidarity with the killed unarmed citizens in St. Petersburg.
This exacerbated the problem and set the stage for the 1917 revolution. Though the Tsar attempted to form a more representative government and impose some reforms, the tension and approval level amongst his subjects fell sharplyCITATION Han15 \p 76 \l 1033 (Dalton 76). The representative assembly known as duma was tasked with leading the country to reforms. It was however nearly impossible because Tsar maintained a firm grip on power and continued to fire and reshuffle his government officials. Ru...