What was going on when I was born?

As Soviet leader, Yuri V. Andropov encountered major problems with the West and with a stagnating economy at home. An obituary, page 9. MOSCOW, Feb. 10 - The Soviet leadership announced today that Yuri V. Andropov died Thursday, less than 15 months after he succeeded Leonid I. Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party. He was 69 years old. The two-paragraph announcement was read on radio and television at 2:30 P.M. (6:30 A.M. New York time) and was repeated throughout the day. It was followed by a series of bulletins on the causes of death and on arrangements for a funeral on Tuesday.

With only a few hours' notice, more than 400 American citizens, protected by United States marines and Druse militiamen, were evacuated from Beirut today. Britain also evacuated hundreds of its citizens, and Italy prepared to do so. The American Embassy had received many appeals from American citizens for transport out of Beirut, where they have been trapped by fighting. It announced this morning that ''because of the unsettled conditions in Lebanon'' it would evacuate any Americans or Lebanese in the process of taking up American citizenship.

NewsAnalysis MOSCOW, Feb. 10 - Yuri V. Andropov's death put an end to the shortest period of rule in Soviet history, if Georgi M. Malenkov's week as titular Communist Party chief after Stalin's death can be overlooked. But neither the worsening Soviet-American chill that marked Mr. Andropov's 15 months as leader nor the changes he set in motion through the Soviet Union's ponderous economic system and bureaucracy are considered likely to be altered anytime soon, no matter who succeeds him. The chief reason, most diplomats agree, is that Mr. Andropov's economic experiments, his crackdown on corruption, and even his hard line in foreign relations found the support of a populace yearning for a tough ''khozyain,'' or boss - and, more important, the support of powerful men and institutions. Ending the Stagnation Power brokers like Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov, now arguably the most powerful man in the Politburo, or Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, and institutions like the military, the K.G.B. or elements that support change in the state planning bureaucracy, had apparently welcomed Mr. Andropov's drive to stir the dormant economy and end the stagnation that had settled over the bureaucracy during the Brezhnev years.

The Long Island Lighting Company defaulted yesterday on its partnership agreement with four other New York State utilities that are building the Nine Mile Point 2 nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Ontario. The company said that it had missed a $1.1 million payment due Thursday and that it would spend no more on the plant, which is still at least two years from operation, at an estimated cost of $4.2 billion for completion. Lilco has invested about $500 million in the project since 1975, when it agreed to buy 18 percent of the reactor. This year its share would have been $180 million. The utility is struggling to raise cash because of its troubles with the Shoreham reactor, which it is building alone on Long Island.

The appointment of Konstantin U. Chernenko today to head Yuri V. Andropov's funeral commission marked at least a partial triumph for a veteran Communist who only 15 months earlier seemed to have reached the end of his political career. Whether the appointment suggested that Mr. Chernenko had been tapped to succeed Mr. Andropov, or whether it was given him on the strength of his position as the second-ranking secretary, was likely to become clear only when the Central Committee named a new General Secretary. A Feat of Survival But the fact that Mr. Chernenko would be the one to supervise the burial of his former rival was in itself a feat of political survival not without an element of irony. Mr. Chernenko, now 72 years old, had been the closest aide to Leonid I. Brezhnev and the clear choice of Mr. Brezhnev's entourage to succeed the late leader. But Mr. Andropov had outmaneuvered them all, and on Nov. 12, 1982, Tass, the official press agency, announced that Mr. Chernenko himself had nominated his rival to become the new Soviet chief.

The passing of a major political leader sometimes creates a sense of opportunity. But as seen by a range of Reagan Administration officials, Yuri V. Andropov's death offers not so much a chance for breakthroughs as a time for gestures that might lead to breakthroughs later on. There is little evidence that anything fundamental has changed in either Moscow or Washington with Mr. Andropov's passing. Essentially, the same people have been running Soviet foreign policy for five or six years. Mr. Andropov was ill for almost one year of his 15-month tenure. His predecessor, Leonid I. Brezhnev, seemed inactive for his last three years. Soviet policy has been much the same throughout. Nor is there much evidence that President Reagan is prepared to propose new compromises that might help break the impasses over the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan or the Lebanon situation or the talks on nuclear arms. All that can be seen thus far is a softening of the Reagan oratory on Soviet-American relations in the last two months.

President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz told Soviet leaders today that during this period of transition in Moscow the United States wanted to reaffirm its desire ''for a constructive and realistic dialogue'' with the Soviet Union. Although some thought was given to having Mr. Reagan lead the American delegation to the funeral of Yuri V. Andropov, the White House said late today that Vice President Bush would head the delegation. (Page 7.) In Santa Barbara, Calif., Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said that Mr. Reagan, in a message of condolences, called on the Kremlin to ''join in peaceful purpose for all mankind.''

Producer prices for finished goods, driven up by a sharp rise in food prices, climbed six- tenths of 1 percent in January, the Labor Department reported today. It was the largest monthly rise in more than a year. The increase, which was as much as the Producer Price Index rose for all of 1983, surprised some economists but was not, several said, a cause for alarm. ''This is not a fundamental turn,'' toward broadly higher inflation, said Otto Eckstein of Data Resources Inc.

The Argentine police today arrested Anibal Gordon, one of the most wanted criminals and suspected leader of a rightist group accused of carrying out hundreds of abductions and murders. The police said Mr. Gordon and his son, Marcelo, were arrested at dawn at a country house in the Cordoba hills, 450 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.

Japan is getting ready for a national holiday on Saturday that many people wish had not been created in the first place. An occasion to commemorate the nation's founding - an equivalent to the Fourth of July - may seem innocent enough. But since its first celebration 17 years ago, National Foundation Day has produced a drum roll of dispute between those who say the country needs such patriotic displays and those who fear anything that, to them, smacks of the militarism that helped produce World War II. This sort of argument occurs often and takes various forms in Japan. It did so again this week over proposals to overhaul the system of education.

An air attack that destroyed a radio command and control center in Nicaragua on Feb. 2 was launched from a Salvadoran Air Force base, according to United States officials here and in Washington. A United States-backed Nicaraguan insurgent group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, claimed responsibility for the attack. The Nicaraguan Government initially protested to Honduras over the raid against the radio center, near the Casitas Volcano, about 65 miles northwest of Managua. It also accused the United States of ordering the attack.

The Libyan Ambassador to Italy, who was shot outside his Rome apartment Jan. 21, died in a hospital today, officials said.