Says Maverick Drank Heavily, Spent Wildly : Pravda Assails Yeltsin’s Conduct on U.S. Trip

Soviet politician Boris Yeltsin drank heavily and spent wildly during his high-profile tour of the United States, an article in the Communist Party daily Pravda contended today.

Yeltsin wound up his nine-city U.S. tour with a visit on Sunday to a supermarket near Houston and then a trip to Miami, where he recalled to reporters the “beautiful American women” he met.

Pravda, without comment, reprinted what it said was an article on Yeltsin’s behavior from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

In a box on the Communist Party daily’s front page telling readers what to find inside, Pravda quoted the La Repubblica article as saying Yeltsin found the United States to be “a holiday, a stage, a 5,000-kilometer-long bar.”

Soviet officials have not commented on Yeltsin’s trip to the United States, saying that his behavior and his comments were his own affair, since he was on a private trip.

But official papers have reprinted several comments recorded in the foreign press that in the Soviet Union could be damaging to Yeltsin.

Yeltsin, the 58-year-old former Communist Party chief of Moscow, was stripped of that job by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev almost two years ago.

He has become an anti-Establishment hero to many Soviets by attacking special privileges for party and government officials.