Sentence adverbials (SA) in Russian are analyzed in their totality, i.e. from a lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic point of view. They are classified according to Hare’s three utterance components which yields (1) neustic, (2) tropic and (3) phrastic SAs. These components are used to represent semantic paraphrases of Russian SAs in utterances from various types of discourse in order to show their exact contribution to the meaning conveyed by the entire utterance. They are further subdivided according to their function: (1) into connectives and non-connectives; (2) into attitudinal and modal SAs; and (3) into temporal and areal SAs. It is demonstrated that many adverbials consist of micro-groups involving three and only three members where one is first person oriented, the other is second person oriented and the last one is third person oriented. This indicates that Russians have one way or the other to take their starting point in the previous discourse. It is, however, stressed that the specificity of the Russian language is found in modal adverbials where a division between external and internal reality exists. We end the examination by discussing the function of word order in connection with more than one SA in an utterance.