After her parents separated when she was six, Margarita and her two sisters were raised by their mother, who owned a hat store and provided lodging for actors.

[2] Barskaya graduated from the First Azerbaijan State Drama Studio when she was 19 and then joined the touring company Red Torch (Krasnyi fakel), where she was the lead actress of travesties under Vladimir Tatischev.

Barskaya initiated the foundation of a film council at Narkompros and organized a children's section for the Association of Revolutionary Film-Workers.

[5] Barskaya wrote the script for and directed the successful 1933 children's fiction film Torn Boots (Rvanye Bashmaki).

Made by the German-Russian film company Mezhrabpomfilm, it is set in early Nazi Germany with its subject being the lives of German workers' children.

She appealed to Lazar Kaganovich, who supervised Moscow's general reconstruction, and, in a letter dated 2 February 1935, to Joseph Stalin.

On July 23, 1939, she committed suicide by throwing herself into the flight of stairs of a film studio after a meeting at which she was actually excommunicated from the filmmaking profession.