What was going on when I was born?

RED AND HOT The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union 1917-1980. By S. Frederick Starr. Illustrated. 368 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $16.95. When Rasputin was poisoned in Petrograd in 1916, the deed was done, according to Prince Felix Yussupov, the poisoner, to the accompaniment, on a gramophone, of ''Yankee Doodle.'' This was one of the more curious intrusions of American popular music into Russian culture, but by no means the first or the last. By the turn of the century, Russians were listening to Tin Pan Alley hits, and the hectic years between the failed revolution of 1905 and World War I found the orchestra of the Czar's own regiment playing ragtime and a sophisticated urban elite dancing the cakewalk. After the October Revolution of 1917 and the upheaval of the civil war came another influx of American music: jazz, the exuberant, seductive form that would delight the Soviet masses and cause ideological headaches for their leaders for decades to come.

AGGRESSIVE new techniques are giving children with spina bifida - a crippling birth defect - a chance to lead more-normal lives. A generation ago, 80 percent of such children died; many who did not were institutionalized with severe mental and physical handicaps. Today, nearly 90 percent live, and, although they still face major medical and social hurdles, doctors and therapists now can limit or prevent the most serious complications, including infection, brain damage and kidney failure. ''We can see a dramatic difference in what's happening with spina bifida newborns and their parents,'' said Barbara Metz of Edison, a 48-year-old spina bifida victim who has worked all of her adult life and who is now vice president of the Spina bifida Association of America. ''Parents are able to seek treatment and answers,'' Miss Metz said. ''They are no longer alone out in the cold.'' In spina bifida, the spine does not close properly, allowing a sac of spinal fluid and nerve tissue to protrude from the back. The effects include paralysis and loss of sensation in the lower body and a host of neurological, orthopedic and urological problems.

When young Americans fantasize about the future, they still dream about a one-family house of their own. But the reality, according to recently compiled statistics of the Federal Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, is receding fast.

The Mets ended one of their worst weeks in memory tonight with more misery, both on and off the field. They lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-2, for their sixth consecutive defeat and the Cardinals' sixth consecutive victory. And Neil Allen and Mark Bradley were fined close to $500 apiece after they broke curfew and nearly became embroiled in a brawl in an afterhours club in East St. Louis, Ill., at 2 o'clock in the morning. Neither player was injured in the incident, although Bradley was shoved. Both insisted that they had left the club promptly to avoid becoming involved. But Allen's brother, Rick, and his cousin got into the fight to defend Bradley and fought a group of about 10 men. Both the brother and cousin were later arrested, and were bailed out of jail at 4:15 A.M. by Neil Allen.

THE date: March 24, 1983. The time: about 9 P.M. Gloria Scalzo of Ossining was driving north on the Taconic State Parkway near Route 133 in the town of New Castle when she said something caught her eye. ''A cluster of lights,'' she recalled, ''almost like a town but it was in the sky.'' She turned off onto Underhill Road but could not get the sight out of her mind; she decided to go back on the parkway. ''As soon as I got back onto the Taconic, I looked over to my left,'' she said, ''and I saw this object with white lights, shaped like a boomerang, coming toward me, going northwest, and I said to myself, my God, that thing is huge.'' Slowing down, she said she watched the object for a few seconds and then it disappeared.

POWERFUL business interests in the state joined forces last week to defeat a bill that would require employers to label hazardous chemicals in the workplace and to disclose health and safety risks to both workers and people in surrounding communities. Until now, the business interests -the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, the Chemical Industry Council of New Jersey and the New Jersey Business and Industry Association - had been negotiating with the bill's advocates, who said they believed a compromise was possible. That changed last week with the announcement that Assemblyman Elliott F. Smith, Republican of Belle Mead, would introduce a countermeasure. The original bill, sponsored by Senator Daniel J. Dalton, Democrat of Blackwood, was unanimously approved last month by the Senate Energy and Environment Committee, which Mr. Dalton heads. On Thursday, Mr. Dalton criticized the Smith bill and questioned the ''willingness and sincerity'' of the Chamber of Commerce and Chemical Industry Council in protecting the health of workers and the public.

A 48-year-old New York City man suffered complications from a severe heart attack while vacationing here last year. He was told his only hope was the Utah artificial heart. The man desperately wanted to have the device implanted in his chest. But University of Utah surgeons, who judged him a fit medical candidate, rejected his application because they believed a strong, supportive family was crucial to the experiment's success. That belief, the surgeons said, was borne out by their subsequent experience with Barney B. Clark, who lived 112 days with the artificial heart.

THE battle over where to place two proposed garbage-transfer stations intensified last week, even as taxpayers began to shoulder the financial burden of building them. ''We're not going to shy away from the county, we're going to fight 'em all the way,'' Mayor Edward T. Dorsey of Briarcliff Manor said about the county's preference for putting one of the stations on a site owned by his village in Mount Pleasant. The other site chosen by two legislative committees lies in White Plains. Announcing a public meeting next Wednesday to oppose it, a White Plains Legislator, John W. DeMarco, said, ''We'll pull out all the stops. If necessary, I'll go to the Governor.

WHEN the house was bought 20 years ago, the owner's only equity was h is 10 percent down payment. But in the next two decades, the market v alue of the house jumped from $50,000 to $200,000, and he paid off m ost of the mortgage. As a result, his equity has risen nearly f ortyfold, from $5,000 at the time of purchase to $190,000 today. In this era of high-yield bank accounts and tax-exempt bonds, such an owner may wonder if his house is the best place for $190,000. On the one hand, the family's monthly outlay for housing is low, paying off the small remaining mortgage balance at the 5 percent interest typical of the early 1960's. On the other hand, however, there is all that money tied up in the house, the stock market looks good these days and banks and municipalities are paying investors and savers rates of 8 to 10 percent. The homeowner cited above is hypothetical, but his dilemma is real and thousands of families in the metropolitan area whose houses and apartments have soared in value are seeking ways of realizing their paper profits and putting them to work. In the city, many dinnerparty conversations revolve around the exquisite agony of the typical Upper East Sider whose three-bedroom co-op, bought for $100,000 eight or nine years ago, now is worth half a million that he cannot get at to invest and make more.

The Royal Ballet arrives at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday trailing a lustrous past. It is a past peopled by Dame Ninette de Valois, the indomitable founder of the 52-year-old company, Sir Frederick Ashton, the self-effacing architect of the English ballet, and stars of the magnitude of Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, her galvanic Russian partner. The aura clings of a small band of plucky adventurers, dancing ''The Sleeping Beauty'' and ''Miracle in the Gorbals'' through the adversities of the war years to forge what was to become the lyric classicism and vivid theater of the English style. Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell, whose legendary partnership epitomized for many Americans the classical purity, elegance and restrained abandon of English ballet, will return together to the New York stage during the Royal's one-week season. And they will return in two ballets by Sir Frederick - the world premiere of ''Varii Capricci,'' and ''Enigma Variations,'' his glowing portrait of Edwardian friendships, in which Miss Sibley and Mr. Dowell will recreate their original roles on opening night. But the Royal Ballet that will perform here next week, as part of the ''Britain Salutes New York'' festival, is a company in transition, resolutely facing up to problems familiar to many major ballet companies today as they move out of charismatic firstgeneration leadership and strong choreographic profiles into a future with fewer and less glittering stars and a dearth of new dancemakers.

Taxing the Elderly Rich Should the elderly pay more taxes? Congress recently moved to tax Social Security benefits of retired people whose incomes exceed a certain level. But maybe it should go further, suggests Allen D. Manvel, a retired division chief of the Census Bureau. In a recent article in Tax Notes, he said that all people 65 and older are eligible for an extra $1,000 personal ex emption and that 12 million people claimed such exemptions in 1980, at an estimated cost to the Treasury of $2.4 billion. The basic problem with the exemption, Mr. Manvel says, is that it is available to all elderly, not just those in need. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, for example, showed that of all the 1980 tax returns filed with adjusted gross income greater than $1 million, more than one-third claimed the $1,000 exemption.

WHEN the Nassau County Board of Supervisors agreed recently to refund some $520,000 in county taxes to the owners of the Chalet, a 140-unit apartment building in Roslyn, it was accepted by county officials as almost a routine matter. Since 1977, about $40 million has been refunded to thousands of commercial property owners in Nassau because of overassessment, and about 8,000 other appeals are awaiting decisions on similar reductions, according to spokesmen for the county. The refunds result from differences in the ways that commercial properties can be assessed to determine their taxable value. When the properties are initially assessed, calculations are made by means of a ''cost approach,'' a method that takes into account the construction costs of the property and the value of its land, minus various measures of depreciation. Within the last 10 years, however, courts throughout New York State, including the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, have ruled that an ''income approach'' - a determination based on the net income generated by a commercial property -must be used to assess the value of such properties if the original assessment is appealed.