Blyukher was born into a Russian peasant family in village Barschinka, in Yaroslavl Governorate. Despite his German surname, he was not of German descent as is sometimes written: the name was given to his family by a 19th-century landlord after a famous Prussian Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. A factory worker before World War I, he joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1914 and served as a corporal until he was discharged in 1915 after being seriously wounded in the Great Retreat of that year. In 1916 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Samara.