What was going on when I was born?

Camille Brown intently studied ''The Atlas of Our Motherland.'' Then, leaning over her exercise map, she wrote in Cyrillic letters, ''Chernoye More.'' Few ninth-grade students in New York high schools are asked in geography class to identify the Black Sea in Russian. But for Camille and the 46 other students enrolled at St. Sergius High School in Manhattan, one of a handful of bilingual Russian-English schools in the United States, such an assignment is commonplace.

President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale battled through a debate tonight that was marked by pointed exchanges on foreign policy and Mr. Reagan's competence. Mr. Mondale hammered at the theme that Mr. Reagan had failed the test of Presidential leadership by not curbing the Central Intelligence Agency's activities in Central America, not protecting American installations in Lebanon and not mastering the subject matter of nuclear arms control. While the President spent much of the debate defending his policies and clarifying earlier statements, he also linked Mr. Mondale to economic and military policies he said were rejected four years ago and said his rival had opposed advances in military preparedness throughout his career. 'Who's in Charge?' At one point, in a remark that seemed to make Mr. Reagan angry, Mr. Mondale said: ''Who's in charge? Who's handling these matters? That's my main point.''

When the time had come to identify himself, Cpl. Stephen Jones of the Royal Air Force and Barry, Wales, said that he still considered himself a 10,000- meter runner. ''I'm not a marathon runner,'' he said today after he completed one for the first time and won the America's Marathon-Chicago in 2 hours 8 minutes 5 seconds, a world record. The 29-year-old Jones, who was eighth in the 10,000-meter run at the Olympics, ran away from a pack that included Carlos Lopes of Portugal, the Olympic marathon champion, and Rob DeCastella of Australia, who had won the 1983 World Championship Marathon at Helsinki, Finland. Jones broke the record of 2:08:13 set by Alberto Salazar at the 1981 New York City Marathon.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1984 The Economy OPEC members are gathering in Geneva to plan a strategy to avoid an oil price war. The plan will be presented to a formal meeting next Monday. But analysts say that the organization's problems are more complex than the current price of oil. (Page A1.)

The White House national security adviser said today that President Reagan would dismiss any United States official who developed or approved the Central Intelligence Agency manual advising Nicaraguan rebels to commit political assassinations. The adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, said Mr. Reagan ''will deal with this as he has with other issues in this domain, unequivocally, firmly, promptly.'' The primer became public last week, and on Thursday the President ordered two investigations to determine if the C.I.A. acted improperly in preparing it. Mr. McFarlane said he expected the investigations to be completed ''within a week or so.'' 'A Subordinate Thing' Asked if the C.I.A.'s director, William J. Casey, will be dismissed if the investigation shows that he was involved, Mr. McFarlane said, ''Whoever was involved ought to be fired.''

MONDAY, OCTOBER, 22, 1984 International OPEC oil ministers began gathering in Geneva to prepare for their emergency meeting, called for next Monday after three countries cut oil prices last week. Several of the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are expected to draft a plan to try to avert a price war. (Page A1, Column 1.) Twenty-six American employees of the United States Embassy left Lebanon in the last two days amid continuing security threats, diplomatic sources said. More are expected to leave today and the size of the staff will be set at about 30, a senior State Department official said. (A1:3.)

An article on the Style page Oct. 14 about fashion in Milan incorrectly described Ariane Koizumi, a model known as Ariane. She is of Japanese and Dutch parentage.

In a red-carpeted showroom on the main floor of the General Motors Building at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, the sticker price on a Chevrolet Chevette reads $5,508. To park that same car in the public garage under the showroom would cost, according to the price posted there, $412.28 a month - or about $4,900 a year. In 1976, that rate was $188.68 a month. There is a lower monthly rate for weekday parking. ''We've got the highest parking fees in the country,'' said Angelo J. Aponte, the Commissioner of the city's Consumer Affairs Department. ''And they keep rising. It's gotten so that people are paying almost as much for a garage as they are to rent their apartments.''

The clouds were passing below, and America was somewhere underneath, and as Grete Waitz was on her way to another race, she was saying that one of the nice things about being back in the United States is that she is permitted to be a normal person again. The unfortunate part of being Norway's national heroine is that when her running clothes are put aside, she remains the figure that has been cast forever outside Bislett Stadium in Oslo. ''I just want to be like everybody else,'' she said. ''I don't mind being a runner when I'm training, but when I'm not, I just want to be treated like everybody else.'' She had just arrived in the nation where she was confident that could happen, even in New York. That is where she has emerged from a little-known, unrecognized late entry in the 1978 New York City Marathon to that race's best-known and most successful figure at the age of 31, and where she has won five championships and set a world record three times.

Francois Truffaut, the exuberant film director whose depictions of children, women and romantic obsessions helped make him a leader of the New Wave group of French movie makers, died yesterday. He was 52 years old. Mr. Truffaut died at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, a hospital spokesman said. He had been hospitalized about 10 days ago for treatment of cancer. Widely considered to be the New Wave's most respected member, Mr. Truffaut was one of the most important film directors of the 20th century. Vincent Canby of The New York Times, writing in 1981, called him ''one of the most continuously surprising and accomplished directors of his day.''

Shareholders of the nation's major bank holding companies have begun paying, in some cases heavily, for their institutions' mistakes. These include enormous loans to energy, agricultural and real-estate businesses in the United States and to financially troubled countries in Latin America. The costs to shareholders were apparent in the third-quarter earnings reports, released during the past two weeks. In some cases, the burden on shareholders was obvious, as in the case of the First Chicago Corporation, which reported a loss of $71.8 million for the three months ended Sept. 30. First Chicago attributed the loss mainly to bad loans made to energy-related businesses and to agriculture.

The hardy people who live here on the granite-laced shores of Cape Ann like to recall an old saying about Gloucestermen: Their boats were made of wood and the men of steel. But most of their deep-sea fishing boats are now steel, and the men who sail them have been shaken by a decision of the World Court at The Hague. That decision gave to Canada waters that New Englanders had fished for more than 200 years, the most productive grounds of the important Georges Bank in the Gulf of Maine of the North Atlantic. Imports Add to Problem ''Now, we Americans are going to be fishing on top of each other in what we have left,'' said Mark Godfried, wearing a worried frown as the engine of his boat, the Stella G, roared to life. A bright light flared, illuminating nets piled behind his pilothouse as he prepared to cast off in the predawn darkness to join the thousands of other New Englanders who make their living harvesting the bounty of the North Atlantic.