The paper discusses the competition between word order strategies in Russian, where an adverb modifying an adjective within a prepositional phrase may be itself either within the PP or to the left of it. Several factors are shown to condition the choice of word order, including the properties of the NP complement of the preposition, the choice of the adverb and, importantly, the length of the preposition. An analysis of leftward displaced modification in terms of the PF lowering of the preposition is sketched.