There are two main reasons why the Russian people supported Lenin and his ideas in the 1910s:
1. Serfdom 2.Russian failures in the First World War up to that point
Throughout the centuries during which Russia had been a country prior to the Revolution of 1917, Russia prescribed to a system of governance known as Feudalism. This meant that the vast majority of the Russian population was impoverished, and were virtually enslaved by the immensely wealthy Aristocrats. This state of servitude of the Russian poor was known as Serfdom. This massive inequality between the poor members of Russian society and the aristocracy had been a source of growing discontent for the Russian lower class. Despite attempts to abolish the system by Enlightened Despots like Catherine the Great as well as it's technical legal abolishment by Czar Alexander II, the system still remained very much a reality of the average member of Russian society. The communists (and the social democrats before them) appealed to the Serfs, as their plan of wealth redistribution benefited the serfs greatly, and the serfs believed that it would lift them out of their impoverished state. Up until 1917, Russia had faced defeat after crushing defeat against the forces of the Central Powers. The losses incurred by the Russian Army were astronomically high, and the Russian lower class was very upset at their government for forcing them into a war that they saw no reason to fight. Lenin promised to bring peace to Russia by negotiating for an armistice with the Central Powers, a prospect that appealed greatly to the war weary Russian lower class.
