<p>The article discusses types of interpretation that Russian complex sentences with factive, implicative and interpretation verbs get under negation and modal operators. By default, the external negative and modal context affects only the main situation. However, one finds exceptions of this rule. We call ‘transparent readings’ those readings in which the external context affects semantically both the matrix and the embedded clause. It turns out that the choice of the reading depends both on the class of the matrix predicate (Russian data opposes emotional predicates, knowledge predicates, and predicates with semantics of evaluation like <i>dojti do</i> ‘go so far as to’ or <i>opustit’sja do</i> ‘stoop to’) and on the properties of the external context (subject control verbs tend to license transparent readings, while object control predicates tend to avoid transparency). I show that the main feature responsible for transparency is the strength of semantic and syntactic link between the clauses, and constructions with transparent readings are similar to restructuring constructions. Additionally, external context can cause changes in the formal strategy of dependent clause embedding. I address three formal strategies that can be chosen under the influence of the external context: the combination of complementizer <i>čto</i> and subjunctive forms; the complementizer <i>čtoby;</i> the strategy I call ‘morphosyntactic copying’. The use of these strategies facilitate transparent readings, even with object and indirect object control predicates, partially because two of them they make it possible to omit the subject of the deepest embedded clause.</p>