Pravda Assails Yeltsin Over U.S. Visit

Opposition lawmaker Boris N. Yeltsin shopped and drank until he dropped on his tour of the United States, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda told its readers Monday.

The Communist Party maverick “leaves behind him a wake of catastrophic prophecies, insane expenses, interviews and above all the perfume of Jack Daniels Black Label,” the left-leaning Italian newspaper La Repubblica said in a Page 5 article translated into Russian and printed on the front page of Pravda.

Pravda did not comment on the article, which said Yeltsin found the United States “a holiday, a stage, a bar 5,000 kilometers long.”

Yeltsin, who arrived back in Moscow late Monday, denied the report. “It’s garbage,” he told the Associated Press, flushing with anger. “It’s a simple lie, slander, and revenge for the fact that Americans received us with admiration.”

The article is potentially very damaging to the silver-haired, 58-year-old populist who has become a hero to many Soviets by criticizing special privileges for party and government officials and urging that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev speed up his reforms.

But previous attacks on Yeltsin have been regarded by his supporters as an effort by powerful Kremlin figures to discredit him, and Yeltsin has turned that deep-rooted suspicion of central authority to his advantage.