April 17, 1983

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.