What was going on when I was born?

Preaching peace among nations, Raisa Smirnova and Ludmila Kondrakhina met the eighth graders of Glenfield School today. By the end of the afternoon, the two middle-aged women from the Soviet Union had the abashed teen-agers clasping hands, swaying and singing American antiwar songs from the 1960's. Both women are fairly high-ranking members of the Communist Party and are visiting the United States for the first time under the auspices of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. They had wanted to see a public school -Mrs. Kondrakhina was once a school principal - and so they found themselves in Philip Stern's classroom facing a social studies class in participatory democracy.

The first full-production air-launchable cruise missile on display yesterday at ceremony at the Boeing plant in Kent, Wash. It is the first of 705 missiles scheduled to be delivered to the Air Force.

More chocolate truffles and caviar. More croissants and duck pate. More copper pots and coffee makers. As the appetite for specialty foods and quality cookware continues to grow, retailers are redesigning and adding space to keep up with the demand. This fall, several important food shops in Manhattan have undergone major expansions. At Bloomingdale's the work is still in progress. Over the next six months, various sections of the delicacy shop will shift around as the master plan is completed in stages to avoid closing the shop or disrupting the Christmas trade. When the renovation is finely completed next spring and the collection of shops within a shop has opened, the total selling area devoted to food will have increased by 75 percent. The first segment of the expansion, the bakery, opened on 59th Street last month. It maintains the warm, old-world look of the adjacent candy shop, which was designed several years ago by Barbara D'Arcy and is the only part of the complex which will remain essentially unchanged.

The BankAmerica Corporation announced yesterday that it intended to acquire Charles Schwab & Company Inc., America's largest discount brokerage firm, for about $53 million in common stock. The transaction could develop into a historic test case for Federal banking laws. The proposed merger would appear to conflict with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which drew a line between investment banking and commercial banking. The act forbids commercial banks to own, underwrite or deal in corporate stocks and bonds.

Budget cuts have caused the Census Bureau to delay or to cancel reports of important findings from the 1980 population count and to say it cannot afford to conduct a 1985 middecade census that Congress has mandated. And further reductions projected by the Reagan Administration over the next two fiscal years have cast doubt on the bureau's plans to modernize its equipment and techniques, a step that officials say would save money and increase efficiency. Repeated delays in issuing 1980 Census data have brought a rumbling of complaints from census users who rely on detailed characteristics of the population by county, city and communities to market products or carry out public planning on such matters as the closing or construction of schools. Hope on Containing Problem However, Bruce K. Chapman, who was confirmed two months ago by the Senate as director of the census and who is trying to rebuild the beleaguered agency, said in an interview that the cuts had not been as deep as had been feared and that he did not foresee further cancellation of any major service in this fiscal year.

With housing prices falling and food inflation slowing, the Consumer Price Index rose by only four-tenths of 1 percent in October, the smallest increase in six months. Spread over a year, such a monthly increase would add up to an annual inflation rate of only 4.8 percent, not compounded. That was a welcome slowdown from the pace of more than 10 percent in the summer months and economists said they expected the index to continue to show small rises for several more months. A decline last month of seven-tenths of 1 percent in the sale price of houses was symptomatic of the way many economists hope that the current recession as well as high interest rates -which have been savaging the housing market - will squeeze down inflation.

Outlook bright for British alliance on eve of election A2 Saudi plan is apparently creating a sharp division in Arab world A3 B-52's hit targets in Egypt as part of war games display A3 Canada's constitution to recog- nize equal rights of women A4 Around the World A6 Haig winds up "cordial" talks with Mexicans A7 4 European allies vex U.S. on Sal- vador A10 Greek Parliament approves So- cialist program A12 Washington Talk Briefing A18 Public interest work loses appeal for law school graduates A18 Eugene McCarthy finds lure of politics growing again A18 Voice of America employee knows the names that matter A18 Living Section Food A chefs' day out at a quail farm C1 As demand grows, food shops expand C1 Thanksgiving: When cuisines meet, it's a changeable feast C4 Living When spouses play the same game C1 Metropolitan Diary C2 Kitchen Equipment: Backyard smokehouse C2 Best Buys C5 Personal Health: Stretching C7 Wine Talk: Beaujolais Nouveau C8 Discoveries: The right stick for Nicaragua More power to the N.R.C. "Snubbies" on the streets Topics: safe neighborhoods Letters A22 James Reston: the stormy sum- mit meeting A23 Russell Baker: another revision, alas A23 Michiel Bicker Caarten: the European protests A23 Hyman G. Rickover: getting the job done right A23

Federal banking regulators took a step a few weeks ago to liberalize the interest paid to the millions of Americans who have passbook savings accounts, but they backed down under intense protests from savings instititions. Although the thrift industry prevailed in that encounter, the debate goes on, and the issue remains acute: Should legal ceilings be lifted, allowing small savers to be paid a market rate of interest? Or would paying them more generous interest bring a collapse of the thrift industry? In September, the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, an interagency group established by Congress to remove federally imposed interest-rate ceilings by 1986, approved an increase of onehalf percentage point in the ceilings on passbook savings accounts. It would have let commercial banks pay a maximum of 5 3/4 percent on such accounts, and it would have let thrift institutions -savings banks and savings and loan associations - pay a maximum of 6 percent. Last month, however, the proposed increase was shelved.

New York City announced yesterday that it would terminate contracts with three private foster-care agencies that it said had serious deficiencies and ordered changes in the programs of three other organizations. The action, taken by the Human Resources Administration, follows an assessment of 48 agencies under contract to the city to provide foster care to children. Reviews of all 70 such agencies, which care for about 23,000 children, will be completed by June. While the city has previously terminated contracts with foster-care groups, yesterday's action was the first time it had done so as a result of an evaluation system implemented this year to establish citywide standards for such agencies.

Providing stark evidence that an economic recession was taking hold last month, the Government reported today that new orders for durable goods plunged 8 percent in October, the biggest one-month drop in two and a half years. Last month's decline in orders at American factories for cars, appliances and other costly items expected to last three years or more was widespread, the report by the Commerce Department said. Auto sales by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler declined 29.8 percent in the latest 10-day reporting period. (Page D3.)

More than 200 miles offshore, on the rich but turbulent spawning ground of the Georges Bank, two huge rigs are already probing for oil and gas far beneath the surface of the shallow Outer Continental Shelf. Many more are expected to follow. Here, at an old naval air station on Narragansett Bay, the beginnings of a bustling marine drilling industry are starting to take shape. The prospect of a major oil strike holds out the promise of new prosperity to the surrounding community but is inspiring deep anxiety among the fisherman who earn their livelihood from the teeming aquatic life of the Georges Bank. Despite furious opposition from environmentalists, fishermen and some state governments, and in the face of a steady stream of litigation, Interior Secretary James G. Watt is pressing forward with his accelerated program of offshore leasing, designed to offer nearly a billion acres of the continental shelf to the oil industry over the next five years.

John and Shernaz Kennedy of Little Neck, Queens are both highranking tournament chess players. He is 24, she is 27. When they announced a year ago that they planned to marry, Mr. Kennedy's worried father took his son aside and said: ''John, you're going to marry this girl. What happens if one of you becomes a significantly better player than the other?'' It was something the young Kennedys had thought about, too. And according to other couples who compete at the highest levels of a game - be it chess, backgammon or bridge - it is something that they, too, strongly considered before tying the knot. They realized that their mutual love of the same game might help bind them together. But at the same time they wondered if the pressures of competing at such lofty levels - often against each other - could eventually split the marriage apart. The Kennedys, who met at a chess tournament in Great Neck in 1979, say that one thing they do to prevent competitive conflict is try to stay at the same level of play with each other. Mrs. Kennedy, who was born in India, is currently the No. 4 ranking woman chess player in the United States; her husband is rated expert, a ranking just below master. They consider themselves to be about equal in skill.