Birthday champagne for sick Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin received roses from Russian president Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW, Russia -- Former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, spent his 70th birthday in the hospital with champagne, cake and roses.

He was taken to hospital on Tuesday with a high temperature and what his aides called a suspected viral infection.

Yeltsin's wife Naina said his fever had dropped by his birthday on Thursday.

She said the family had been preparing a "very festive" birthday celebration with relatives and longtime friends at home, so were saddened that the celebrations had to be limited to hospital visits.

Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov brought Yeltsin large bouquets of red roses, and the Kremlin chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, also visited.

Yeltsin enjoyed a glass of champagne and ate a cake baked by his wife, Kremlin protocol chief Vladimir Shevchenko said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Foreign leaders and Russian citizens had sent telegrams to Yeltsin, Shevchenko said.

Yeltsin has been largely out of public view since his surprise resignation on December 31, 1999.

He has been living in a country residence outside Moscow and working on his memoirs, one volume of which was published last year.

A documentary on government RTR television showed scenes from Yeltsin's life since leaving office, including footage of a slow-moving and slow-speaking Yeltsin at family gatherings at a luxurious residence.

As his 70th birthday approached, Russian media have focused on his mixed legacy.

He is praised for introducing the basics of democracy -- freedom of speech and religion, multi-party elections, the right to private property -- and the underpinnings of the free market.

But he has been roundly condemned for the botched reforms of the 1990s, which enriched a few and impoverished millions, and for the widespread corruption that engulfed Russia during his tenure.

Otto Latsis, editor of the Novye Izvestiya daily, wrote on Wednesday that Yeltsin had met the demands of the time when he rose to power, as the Soviet system was collapsing.

The Kommersant daily wrote that even if the reforms that Yeltsin initiated "were to return to dust, the period of his rule will remain the brightest and most romantic in Russia's 20th-century history -- simply because Russia had not experienced such high expectations for a very long time."

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The Duma, in Russian

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