In the 19th century a landlord gave the nickname Blyukher to the Gurov family in commemoration of the famous Prussian Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742–1819).

[4] In 1914, Vasily Gurov — who later formally assumed Blyukher as his surname — was drafted into the army of the Russian Empire as a corporal but in 1915 was seriously wounded in the Great Retreat, and excused from military service.

[6] In late November 1917 the Red Guard forces of Commander V. K. Sadlutskii and Commissar Blyukher moved from Samara to Chelyabinsk to suppress Alexander Dutov's revolt.

For this achievement in September 1918, he became the first recipient of the Order of the Red Banner (later he was awarded it four more times: twice in 1921 and twice in 1928),[6] the citation read: "The raid made by Comrade Blyukher's forces under impossible conditions can only be equated with Suvorov's crossings in Switzerland."

Based at Khabarovsk, Blyukher exercised a degree of autonomy in the Far East unusual for a Soviet military commander.

With Japan steadily extending its grip on China and hostile to the Soviet Union, the Far East was an active military command.

He met the deputy head of the NKVD, Mikhail Frinovsky,[9] who appears to have reassured him that he would not be held responsible for letting Lyushkov cross the Manchurian border.

On 17 June, Frinovsky and the head of the Red Army political directorate, Lev Mekhlis, were dispatched to the Far East to conduct mass arrests, and to spy on Blyukher.

[11] As early as February 1956, it was secretly reported to the party leadership, by a commission appointed to investigate the purges, that a former officer had seen Blyukher while he was under interrogation, and that "his whole face was swollen and covered in bruises."