During the Soviet era, Barvikha was known as the site of the most desirable state dachas for government officials and leading intellectuals.

There is a Barvikha rail station on a spur of the Belarus direction of the Moscow Railway, first opened at the current site in 1927.

[2] Barvikha is surrounded by a zone of pine forest nature preserve on the south bank of the Moscow River.

It was designated as a clinic for leading government officials suffering from illnesses of digestion and metabolism; it was there that Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov died in 1949.

[13] In December 2012, the town was called a "magnet for deposed leaders given asylum in Russia" by a writer for The New York Times, who suggested that Barvikha might become the new home of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.

[14] Former leaders in the town reported by the NYT included Askar Akayev, formerly the president of Kyrgyzstan, Aslan Abashidze of Adjara, and the wife and family members of Slobodan Milošević.

After fleeing his country in the wake of the Euromaidan protests in 2014, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych reportedly moved into a $52 million residence in the town as well.