Blyukher was born into a peasant family in Yaroslavl governorate. He studied at a parish school. He worked at the factories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, and at the Kazan railway. During World War I, Blyukher was drafted to the front as a private and was dismissed from the army due to a serious injury. Since 1916 (possibly since 1917) he was a member of the Bolshevik Party.

After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to the army to carry out revolutionary work. Blyukher was elected to the regimental committee and the city Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies in Samara. Blyukher was involved in the establishment of Soviet power in the Volga region and the Urals: he was a member of the Samara Military Revolutionary Committee, a commissar of the Red Guard detachment in Chelyabinsk, and the Chairman of Chelyabinsk Revolutionary Committee. Blyukher was at the forefront of the establishment of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

In early 1918, he led the seizure of Orenburg, occupied by the Cossacks’ ataman Aleksander Dutov. In the summer of 1918, he led the Urals Guerilla Army, which had been encircled by the Cossacks of the Orenburg army near Orenburg. Blyukher led it to join the regular Red Army near Kungur. For this raid he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, which made him Soviet Russia’s first knight of this award. He commanded the 4th Ural Rifle Division (from November 1918, the 30th Rifle Division) in the Kungur and Perm directions. He served as assistant to the Commander of the 3rd Army, Head of the Vyatka fortified region. Chief of the 51st Rifle Division, engaged in operations on the Eastern Front in 1919–1920, which ended in victory over the armies of Aleksander Kolchak.

In August 1920, the division was transferred to the south of Russia to fight the troops of General Pyotr Wrangel. The division defended the Kakhovsky bridgehead, participated in the assault on Perekop, the capture of Sevastopol and Yalta.

In 1921, Blyukher was transferred to the Far East, where the Far Eastern Republic (DVR) was established. He held the positions of Minister of War of the DVR and Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the DVR (July 1921 – July 1922). He reorganized the army and won a number of victories over the White Guard troops, including the capture of the Volochaevsky fortified area in February 1922. He played a key role in the victory over the White forces and the Japanese interventionists in the Far East.

After the Civil War, he held top military posts. As the Chief military adviser to the National Government of the Republic of China in Guangzhou (1924–1927) Blyukher oversaw the establishment of the Kuomintang army and elaborated the plan for the Northern Expedition. In 1929–1938, he was Commander of the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army. Marshal of the Soviet Union (1935). In 1938, during the conflict with the troops of the Imperial Japanese Army at Lake Khasan, he commanded the Far Eastern Front. He was accused of unsatisfactory leadership of the troops and dismissed from his post. On October 22, 1938, he was arrested on charges of spying for Japan. He died in Lefortovo prison on November 9, 1938. He was rehabilitated in 1956.