YELTCIN SALUTES RUSSIA'S PRIMA DONNA OF POP ALLA PUGACHEVA, Russia's best-loved songstress, celebrated her 50th birthday yesterday to an incredible outpouring of adoration from the whole country. President Yeltsin shared a glass of champagne in the Kremlin with the woman they call "The Prima Donna," and awarded her the Order of Service to the Fatherland, Second Class. "First Class is awarded only to the President as a symbol of his power," he explained to the joyful Ms Pugacheva. She was accompanied by her young pop star husband, Fillip Kirkorov, and Valentin Yudashkin, a designer. The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper published Ms Pugacheva's home address last week as part of its campaign to persuade readers to take one rose each to her door in the hope that she would receive a million roses for her birthday. She emerged yesterday morning, cigarette holder in hand, to greet screaming rose-bearing fans before she sped off to the Kremlin in her trademark white limousine. "Come back when I'm 60," she laughed. Ms Pugacheva was Russia's first real pop star. She had no interest in politics and sang only love songs, like Robot, her first song played on early morning radio in 1965, and Iceberg, a later song with the lyrics, "You are as cold as an iceberg, your sorrows lie under the dark water". She was the first Russian star to have her turbulent private life scrutinised by the tabloid press. Even now, rumours about plastic surgery and her much-loved gap teeth, which miraculously moved together last year; attempts to have a child by Mr Kirkorov, and a possible near fatal illness resulting in dramatic weight loss, dominate Russia's more frivolous newspapers. She married Mr Kirkorov - her third husband who is more than 20 (from editor - not more 20 - 18) years her junior - in 1994, three years after the birth of her first grandchild, Nikita. Ms Pugacheva's daughter heard about the wedding on the news and sent a telegram reading: "Dear Mum and Dad, congratulations." Ms Pugacheva is famous for her short skirts and love life as much as for her songs. Komsomolskaya Pravda said yesterday: "Love her or hate her, she is part of life, part of our heritage." In the 1970s people used to joke that President Brezhnev would be remembered as a politician of the Pugacheva era. Mr Yeltsin appeared to be protecting himself from any attempts to update the old joke yesterday, saying: "Many of us can claim to have lived in the Pugacheva era." He told the singer he had become a fan early in her career when she "opposed those who wanted to prohibit, to erect obstacles . . . I also fought, and in this we are similar". In Soviet times the authorities considered some of her songs too racy for release, though in 1991, President Gorbachev officially honoured her by making her a People's Artist of the USSR - the last, as it turned out. Yesterday, the media were falling over themselves to applaud her, even re-running Mr Kirkorov's documentary in her honour, which three years ago was seen by 85 per cent of the Russian public. from Anna Blundy in Moscow, "The Times" 16 april 1999