What was going on when I was born?

Congress can cut military spending, as a chorus of voices is asking, but it has few tools to reduce the constantly growing costs of buying and operating a military force and that may be the only way to achieve real control of the Defense Department budget. This is only one of several gloomy assessments that analysts in and out of Congress are making as initial hearings on the military budget begin in Senate and House committees. Complex, seemingly paradoxical, problems in reducing the military problems in reducing the military budget arise most acutely in the category of buying weapons and equipment. of President Reagan's military budget request for the fiscal year 1984, the largest single share of military spending. Long-range plans will raise that share to 39 percent by 1988. It has become customary to note that, whatever the members of Congress say about the Defense Department's budget total, they seldom support cancellations or major reductions in particular programs that create jobs and income in their home areas.

Governor Cuomo yesterday ordered the state not to approve emergency evacuation plans for the area around the Shoreham nuclear power plant in Suffolk County. State officials said that without such a plan, the Long Island Lighting Company's $3.2 billion plant, which is near completion, would be unable to go into operation. ''The action right now stops Shoreham,'' Michael J. Del Guidice, the secretary to the Governor, said of the order. In Washington, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will make the final decision on whether the plant can operate, said of the effect of Mr. Cuomo's action: ''It's not clear. The N.R.C. would have to look at the situation.''

Senator Bob Dole, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said today that Congress should pass selective tax increases this year, particularly for commercial banks and thrift institutions and possibly for insurance companies. The Senator's remarks pointed to the possibility of enactment of an omnibus tax bill this year, although Mr. Dole aides said it was too early to be certain. Mr. Dole reiterated his position that Congress should not undo the individual tax cuts enacted in 1981, especially the 10 percent reduction scheduled for July 1, 1983. The Kansas Republican said, as he has before, that if Congress adopted a budget resolution for 1984 that called for raising additional tax revenue, ''we have a responsibility to do that.''

Kenneth L. Adelman, President Reagan's choice to be the nation's chief arms control official, said today that he would fight to win confirmation in the Senate, where his nomination has been under criticism. Mr. Adelman's remarks, combined with President Reagan's insistence that the Senate accept him as the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, set the stage for a confrontation between the White House and Capitol Hill and raised the prospect of what one Republican Senator described as a ''debilitating, demeaning experience.'' New Choice Is Urged The Senate Foreign Relations Committee put off a vote on the confirmation of Mr. Adelman, the deputy United States delegate to the United Nations, after it became apparent Wednesday morning that his nomination would fail to win the committee's endorsement. As Administration officials redoubled their efforts today to win support for Mr. Adelman, senators of both parties acknowledged that Mr. Reagan might prevail in a floor battle but nonetheless renewed their pleas that he make a new selection to direct the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Reagan Administration officials said today that Awacs surveillance planes had been sent to Egypt because of concern over possible Libyan military moves against the Sudan. They said they expected the planes to remain only a few days unless Libya launched an attack. In a press briefing at the White House, a senior Administration official, who refused to be mentioned by name, sought to play down the situation in the Mediterranean. But other officials said the four planes had been sent to Egypt because of heightened concern in Washington, Cairo and Khartoum over reports indicating a possible Libyan attack on the Sudan. The senior Administration official said the decision to send the four Awacs, loaded with electronic surveillance and communications gear, was made late last week by American officials in consultation with the Egyptians. He refused to provide details on why they were sent to Egypt, except to say the move was linked to Libyan behavior. Another official said the request for the Awacs came from President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

An item in the Executive Changes column in Business Day on Feb. 10 incorrectly identified the company that promoted Denis F. Mullane. It was the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company.

G.M. and Toyota have apparently decided to bypass the U.A.W. in hiring workers for their joint production of subcompact cars at a G.M. plant in Fremont, Calif. Executives of both companies said the new venture will not be bound by the General Motors contract with the union. But the union said G.M. had promised it would represent the workers at the plant. The divergence appeared to set the stage for a confrontation. (Page A1.) Executives who were asked about the G.M.- Toyota venture noted that it contained some new twists and a few unfavorable aspects. (D3.) Ford reported a loss of $236 million in the fourth quarter, an improvement over the $346 million it lost a year ago. It cited lower operating costs, among other things. For all of 1982, the company's losses narrowed to $658 million, from a $1 billion deficit in 1981. The figures were close to analysts' projections. (D1.)

IT is music whose time has come, even though its time is long gone. It is the music of the klezmorim, those itinerant musicians who trooped through Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, playing melodies of strident, compelling joy and pulsating rhythm, designed to raise spirits that were often dashed by the grim politics of the region. The music of the klezmer (that's a singular, one of the klezmorim) has come a long way since then, as far as Carnegie Hall, where it will be heard in two concerts Sunday, at 3 and 7 P.M. (tickets, $7.50 to $15; box office: 247-7459). The music makers are a half-dozen klezmorim, young Californians who call their band simply by the name of their art, the Klezmorim.

UPTOWN galleries come in many shapes and sizes, but most of them are fundamentally domestic in scale. Even if they have a storefront directly on the street, we are likely to find ourselves in companionable spaces once we get inside. If they are upstairs, in bits of brownstones or grand houses cut into 11 pieces, we have an even stronger impression of having walked into a rather large living room in which one or two things are for sale and a uniformed parlormaid is about to come in with tea and cookies. Five such places are considered here. When people talk about ''the rebirth of European painting,'' they generally do it in terms of seven or eight names that turn up everywhere. Though it may be conceivable that no other names need be considered, I doubt it. A bastion of European painting that never gets any factitious publicity is the Lefebre Gallery at 47 East 77th Street, which has been showing European painters year in and year out, and is conspicuous for its immunity to fashion. The current show is of paintings by Klaus Fussmann, a 44-year-old German painter based in West Berlin, who has been showing at the Lefebre Gallery since 1976.

SOHO is the place where the garrets are the largest and plushest and are more likely to be inhabited by galleries than artists. On balance, exhibitions in SoHo go to greater extremes of style and scale than do their counterparts uptown, and it's in this neighborhood, accordingly, that the newest, hottest tickets stage their commercial breakthroughs. The current ''ticket'' is Gerard Garouste, who participated in ''Zeitgeist,'' an international spectacle mounted last year in West Berlin, and who has appeared in some group shows in this country. But the exhibition now being shared by Castelli Gallery, at 420 Broadway, and Sperone Westwater Fischer, at 142 Greene Street, is the artist's first American solo show.

Since mid-January, Zimbabwe's western province of Matabeleland has been the center of a harsh campaign against members of the Ndebele tribe by troops drawn from the Shona tribe of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. While the number of casualties is not known, there have been estimates that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the campaign. Although The Government refuses to reveal casualty figures, it has denied one report that 500 people have died. The Government has said it is trying to root out what it calls ''lawlessness'' among dissidents in Matebeleland, some of them Zimbabwean Army deserters. The Ndebeles are the tribe of Joshua Nkomo, Mr. Mugabe's ally in the Patriotic Front that fought a guerrilla war for independence, but his political rival before and after the conflict.

''I believe the American people want what the President wants, which is real arms reductions which increase security.