What was going on when I was born?

SOUTHAMPTON IT has been a summer for Russian music and culture on Wildwood Lake, and some of the neighbors are complaining. The music comes from the Alonushka Camp, where, beginning in July, emigres from the Soviet Union, most of them Jewish, have been vacationing in a Russian atmosphere provided on a 10-acre camp by the new owners, Marianna and Victor Shulman. Mr. Shulman, an American citizen who left the Soviet Union in 1976, is a singer, composer and impresario well known in emigre circles. Many evenings he plays a mildly amplified electric piano and sings Russian ballads, folk songs and pop for an appreciative and nostalgic outdoor audience of between 50 and 75 overnight guests. While by the standard of even the most subdued rock concert the music is by no means loud, Mr. Shulman's rich voice is strong and apparently loud enough to be heard at the homes of at least 28 of the Shulmans' neighbors along the shore.

BAYPORT THE little blue and white plane taxied slowly along, jolted by the ruts and weed clumps. Near the line of trees it turned. The grassy fields stretched away in front. There was no control tower, no need to radio for permission to take off. The air traffic controllers and their strike meant nothing here. The pilot glanced overhead to both sides. Then he pulled out the throttle. The engine roared to life, sending the bouncing and shivering plane down the runway. Suddenly, the pilot pulled the wheel back and the plane shot upward. The field, lined on one side with a row of antique biplanes, dropped away. The houses disappeared under the dark green tree leaves. Behind the plane, Bayport Aerodrome shrank to a tiny sliver among the housing developments of the South Shore. Once the Island was dotted with small airports with grass runways like Bayport. They served as nurseries for generations of Long Island pilots. But the eastward march of the suburbs drove up land values and taxes, making the fields uneconomical. The coup de grace usually came when homeowners protested about the noise and danger associated with the small airports that had been engulfed by the housing developments. Since World War II, small fields in Rockaway, Massapequa, Amityville, Deer Park, Commack, Hauppauge and Riverhead have closed.

Voyager 2 traversed 1.24 billion miles in four years to reach Saturn last week, somewhat the worse for wear but nevertheless able to reveal the largest, deepest crater in the Saturnian moon system - a rift 250 miles wide and 10 miles deep on Tethys. The space probe also reconnoitered the relatively uncratered moon Enceladus and measured starlight flashing through the planet's rings in an effort to calculate their widths and count what may be thousands of ringlet subdivisions. Damage to the vehicle included a jammed camera swivel platform, exact cause unknown as of late yesterday, which meant some missed pictures. Aside from that, scientists rejoiced in a mission that may explain, among other things, the anomalous behavior of the moon Hyperion and dismiss a popular explanation of wide gaps in Saturn's ring structure.

After shopping in vain for a Manhattan apartment she could afford, Margaret Erlanger, a marketing assistant at American Express, recently purchased a 3 1/2-room co-op in a high rise in Forest Hills, Queens, for $26,000. Although she is not happy in Queens and plans to use the apartment ''as leverage to get back to the city'' she is pleased with the economics of her move. Her monthly maintenance charge of $340 includes gas and electricity. The current average selling price of apartments in Manhattan is $65,000 to $75,000 a room, with a yearly maintenance of $1,900 to $2,200 a room, according to Brewster Ives, chairman of the board of Douglas Elliman-Gibbons and Ives, which manages approximately 200 cooperative buildings in Manhattan. Banks usually require that the monthly cost of paying off a co-op loan, including the monthly maintenance, not exceed 25 percent to 30 percent of the purchaser's income. At today's interest rates of 16.75 percent or more, buyers with a 25 percent downpayment would need an income of over $40,000 to qualify for an apartment with a $65,000 price tag and a monthly maintenance of $400.

Federal agents posing as underworld dealers in stolen securities seized three men, an arsenal of weapons and more than $50 million in negotiable bonds Friday night in a sting operation that unfolded in a midtown hotel suite and cloak-and-dagger chases through New York City. The sting, disclosed yesterday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recovered what was believed to be one of the largest blocks of stolen or missing loot in criminal annals. By comparison, the largest cash robbery in the nation's history, at the Lufthansa terminal at Kennedy International Airport in 1978, netted $5.8 million. The F.B.I. operation involved two tense confrontations with suspects at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42d Street near Park Avenue and the clandestine, five-hour pursuit of two of the suspects in a rented limousine through Manhattan and Queens to four pickup points for the missing bearer bonds.

Owners and developers in New York City are beginning to test the market for commercial condominiums. While the few such conversions completed to date have been in smaller, older buildings, two major projects are now underway that are far more ambitious, and - if successful - could significantly broaden the potential commercial condominium market. A group headed by Harry B. Helmsley has taken an option on 1410 Broadway, a 36-story building in the garment district filled with knitware offices and showrooms, and is surveying tenants about purchasing their space. If the survey is favorable, a Helmsley spokesman said the option will be exercised and the building converted to condominium ownership. The former Korvettes building at 575 Fifth Avenue has been bought by Sterling Equities, which plans to erect a 35-story skyscrapercondominium that would become the International Center for Diamonds.

ALTHOUGH many tenants under the jurisdiction of the Westchester Rent Guidelines Board now face rent increases of from 12 to 18 percent, they won two concessions last week: a smaller charge than last year if they move within the building and no possibility of a fuel pass-along charge. By a vote of 6 to 3, the board approved rent increases of 12, 15 and 18 percent on, respectively, one,- two,-and three-year leases. The increases, the largest of any approved this year by rent guideline boards in the metropolitan area, will be effective with leases renewed from Oct. 1. The vacancy charge, although affecting only a small number of tenants, was a major issue in the deliberations of the board. The board is being sued by the Westchester Department of Social Services and by several tenant groups for authorizing the charge last year.

The Mets drew 44,598 persons into Shea Stadium last night, their biggest crowd in more than a year, and treated them to a 3-2 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. The crowd, presumably attracted by a postgame display of fireworks, saw the Mets win by scrounging for opportunities and stealing bases. They scored runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, and each time the leadoff man got on base, stole second and eventually scored. ''That's our game,'' said Joe Torre, the manager of the Mets, who have won 11 of 19 games in the second half of the split season. ''Until the big guys start hitting, we've got to run. Sometimes we'll get thrown out. But we'll come back and run again.''

T HERE isn't just Conoco, which after fending off Seagram and Mobil has disappeared into Du Pont. Cities Service is fretting over the flirtations of Nu-West and Mesa Petroleum. Garfinckel, Brooks Brothers, Miller & Rhoads is on the run from Allied Stores. Nowadays executives of even the largest corporations are whispering among themselves: How do we defend our company when a corporate raider tries to snatch it up? ''A takeover attempt is the single most important thing that will happen to the management of a corporation,'' said Martin Lipton, a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a well-known specialist who has aided such companies as McGraw-Hill, St. Joe Minerals and United Technologies to repel unwelcome suitors. Displayed on a shelf in his Park Avenue office are miniature ''tombstones,'' newspaper ads announcing earlier takeover offers. Conoco couldn't do it, but there are ways of thwarting a raider. Once an offer has been made, the odds of eluding a suitor are about 1 to 4, and, understandably, takeover specialists believe a company's first line of defense is to even refuse to play the game.

Despite repeated warnings from executives of the Oakland Raiders, Ken Stabler, one of the most successful quarterbacks in professional football, persisted in his association with a well-known New Jersey gambling figure who is an associate of the Princeton-based Simone DeCavalcante organized crime family. Mr. Stabler's association with the gambler, Nicholas Dudich of Perth Amboy, began and grew during his last four seasons with the Raiders, according to information developed by reporters in interviews with Federal and local law enforcement officials and the Oakland club in half a dozen cities. Oakland traded Mr. Stabler to the Houston Oilers in 1980. Mr. Stabler's relationships with gambling figures generated increasing concern within the Raider organization and with the team's owner, Al Davis, to the point that, Mr. Davis said in an interview, they became a factor in his decision to trade Mr. Stabler. In an interview last night, Mr. Davis resisted characterizing Mr. Stabler's activities while a member of the Raiders. ''I would not deny to you that there was an association,'' he said. ''You understand? I would not deny to you that I was concerned about it. I would not deny to you that I talked about it several times. I would not deny to you that I heard several of our people contact the league office .... and alert them to things.''

ENGLEWOOD OFFICIALS of this city, concerned about the decline of urban centers, have a plan that they hope will keep the downtown business district bustling despite the lure of Bergen County's five major shopping malls. The plan, the first to involve the business district, offers lowinterest loans for facade improvement to merchants. But with the loans go tough esthetic standards designed to rid Palisades Avenue - the main thoroughfare - of its gaudier trappings and expose the area's original architectural qualities. It has gained some of its impetus from the city's successful conversion of its defunct railroad terminal - around which Englewood was built 81 years ago - into a restaurant. That establishment opened last October and has since expanded its kitchen to accommodate crowds that are better than expected.

THE Central New Jersey chapter of the American Heart Association has something for the souvenir hunter who has everything - dirt from a Martian landing site. For $1.50, the chapter will send a contributor slightly less than an ounce of soil in a 2-by-3-inch ziplock bag and a certificate attesting to the soil's authenticity. The soil is from Grovers Mill, a tiny Mercer Couny community about two miles southeast of Princeton University. It was there that Martians landed on Oct. 30, 1938, as reported to the world on Orson Welles's ''Mercury Theater'' radio broadcast.