What was going on when I was born?

Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan use drugs extensively, and some Russians sell gasoline, ammunition and stolen guns to support their habits, according to several Russian defectors living with Afghan rebels. In addition, several rebel commanders say that they have captured Russians while the soldiers were drugged or while they were trying to buy hashish or heroin from village merchants. According to Western diplomats and analysts of the Afghan situation in Pakistan and elsewhere, Russian troops in Afghanistan have turned to drugs for the same reasons that many Americans did in Vietnam: They are young, away from home constraints, bored, frightened and under fierce pressure to prove themselves. And many of the Russian soldiers in Afghanistan are said by the defectors to have a 10th-to-12th-grade education. Golden Crescent Opium Trade Afghanistan is one of the world's major production centers for opium and its derivatives, according to American narcotics agents in Pakistan and elsewhere in Asia. It is part of the so-called golden crescent extending from Iran to Pakistan and Afghanistan, an area that the agents said accounts for more than half of the world's opium output.

The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said today that President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines was incapable of bringing about reform and should step down. The Senator, Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, spoke at a news conference called to issue a committee staff report on the worsening economic, military and political situation in the Philippines. The committee report made public today cited the growing momentum of the New People's Army, the military arm of the Philippine Communist Party, and predicted that the Philippines had less than three years to make fundamental changes before civil unrest and the Communist insurgency bring down the Government. Change Called 'Very Unlikely' Despite American pressure for reforms, the report concluded, a change of course by Mr. Marcos ''is very unlikely, and there is serious doubt whether the Marcos regime still has the administrative and political capability to initiate reforms even if it were so inclined.''

President Reagan has proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union abandon plans for the deployment of mobile, land-based nuclear missiles under a new arms-control proposal offered in Geneva, Congressional and Administration officials said today. Mr. Reagan's proposal would require that the Russians scrap plans for their mobile SS-24 and SS-25 missiles. In return the United States would abandon its development of the Midgetman mobile missile. The President's proposal is part of a new arms control package Mr. Reagan announced Thursday in response to a Soviet plan that calls for a 50 percent cut in nuclear arsenals. Senior Administration officials briefed Congressional leaders on the proposal today.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger today sharply rebuked Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. for his criticism of the Government's plea bargain with John A. Walker Jr. in the espionage case against him. In a rare public criticism of a senior official, Mr. Weinberger said: ''Secretary Lehman now understands that he did not have all the facts concerning the matter before he made injudicious and incorrect statements with respect to the agreement. Secretary Lehman now has all the facts and is in complete agreement with the Government's decision.'' Under the agreement, Mr. Walker and his son, Michael, pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union; John Walker received a life sentence and Michael Walker was given a prison term of 25 years.

Students through the years have gone to Brooklyn College from the far reaches of the borough: riding the D train from Sheepshead Bay or the B-11 bus from Sunset Park, driving from Canarsie and even walking from Flatbush. Whatever their mode of transportation, they have been commuters who left the grassy, tree-shaded campus on Bedford Avenue in the Midwood section each afternoon only to make the trip to the college again the next morning. Now, Brooklyn College - no longer tuition-free but part of a university that maintains a low-tuition policy - is trying to change its identity just a bit. It intends to build a dormitory and, for the first time in the City University system, have students living on a main campus. The plan is being watched carefully throughout the university, the quintessential commuter institution, that since the opening of City College in 1847 has not had a policy of providing student residences. City College, Queens College and some of the other campuses share Brooklyn's interest in providing housing for students and are examining plans of their own.

The House of Representatives voted virtually along party lines Friday for a Democratic proposal to balance the budget by 1990, raising the stakes in an impasse with the Senate, which has passed a significantly different plan. The plan is attached to a bill to raise the Government's debt ceiling for another year. Separately, the House sent the Senate a $17 billion, five-day increase in the debt ceiling, an action designed to gain time to break the deadlock without forcing a politically unpopular manipulation of the Social Security trust funds. The House then adjourned for the weekend.

Friends of the wife of Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet dissident, said today that they had received a telegram from her saying that she will leave the Soviet Union for medical treatment in the West at the end of November and that she is preparing her husband, the Soviet dissident, ''to spend the winter alone.'' This would mean that Dr. Sakharov's wife, Yelena G. Bonner, would not arrive in the West before the summit meeting between President Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, which is scheduled for Nov. 19 and 20 in Geneva. First Direct Communication The message, in a telegram received by friends today, was the first direct communication from Miss Bonner since reports earlier this week that she would be allowed to go to the West for treatment. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Thursday that Soviet officials had confirmed the reports.

More than 100 people waited several hours in this town's stately colonial plaza tonight because Mario Solorzano was running late. Mr. Solorzano is crisscrossing Guatemala with a message that no one here has dared to espouse publicly for years. He is preaching Socialism. In 30 years of rule by rightist governments, most of them military, Guatemalan Socialists and other civilian leftists have paid a frightening price for their activism. Thousands have been slain or disappeared.

After two rounds of discussions this week, Nicaragua and the United States have failed to reach agreement on the resumption of talks, and each side blamed the other today. The State Department said Nicaragua had rejected a proposal under which the United States would agree to resume talks on normalizing relations provided Nicaragua first agreed to church-mediated talks with the exiled anti-Sandinista leadership, known as the United Nicaraguan Opposition. The issue was discussed in meetings Tuesday and Thursday between the Nicaraguan Ambassador, Carlos Tunnermann Bernhein, and a United States special envoy, Harry W. Schlaudeman.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said today that only the imposition of stiff economic sanctions by Britain and the United States could end apartheid in South Africa without widespread violence. ''Economic force has the power to bring change in South Africa,'' Mr. Jackson said. ''The United States and Britain have the power in their hands to bring a just settlement in South Africa.'' Britain and the United States are the two largest investors in South Africa and are its leading trading partners. Mr. Jackson said apartheid ''cannot survive without British and American trade and investment.''

The Reagan Administration said today, in a policy statement of support for rebels fighting the Soviet-backed Government in Angola, that the United States ''should sympathize with and support such resistence.'' It said it intended to work with Congress in coming weeks on how best to do this. The statement came after several weeks of discussion in the Administration over how to respond to growing demands in Congress for open financing of aid to the rebels, as well as a parallel move by Administration officials to put together a covert military aid program for the insurgents. No decisions have been made on how to proceed, a senior Administration official said, and the statement clearly left open the possibility of further efforts for a negotiated settlement in southern Africa that might remove the need for American aid to the rebels.

The Government plans to ban radio, television and photo coverage of unrest in 38 districts under an emergency decree in an attempt to cut down on violence, it was reported today. The regulations, which are expected to be carried in the Government Gazette on Saturday, would ban television, still photography and coverage with sound equipment of unrest in areas covered by the emergency decree declared 60 days ago by President P. W. Botha. Publication would make the regulations effective immediately.