October 22, 1983

Video machines have come to the Soviet Union and the Government does not like what it sees. An underground millionaire, queen of the black market in a provincial town, greets visitors at her garish home. Opulent carpets line the walls, chandeliers glitter, fruits overflow from huge bowls. But the prize acquisition shown the visitors is a Japanese video machine on which ''Afrique Simon,'' a rock star popular across Russia, sways and gyrates.

President Reagan met today with the members of his commission on Central America, and later the panel's chairman, Henry A. Kissinger, said he and his colleagues had found the situation in the region ''graver than most of us had expected.'' Mr. Kissinger said the 12-member bipartisan commission, which recently returned from a six-day trip to the five Central American nations and Panama, was not ready to submit any recommendations to President Reagan. But he said after the group's 35- minute session with the President that unless the region's problems ''are alleviated, we will be faced with an explosive situation.'' In another diplomatic development, the Administration spurned a Nicaraguan plan in which Managua offered a pledge not to support the guerrilla movement in El Salvador if the United States would halt support for Nicaraguan rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista Government.

The State Education Department said today that the plan of the Board of Regents to improve curriculum and add rigor to elementary and secondary education throughout New York would cost $2.9 billion. In 1984, the first year of the five-year plan, the cost is expected to be $209 million. Department officials said they assumed the plan would be financed by a combination of local, state and Federal funds, but declined to estimate what percentage would be required of each. Nor would they say whether new local or state taxes would be necessary.

A 10-ship United States task force that had been headed for duty off Lebanon has been diverted and sent instead toward Grenada as a precautionary measure, a Defense Department official said tonight. The official said the force included 1,900 marines, some of whom had been scheduled to relieve American members of the multinational force in Lebanon. The diversion was a precautionary measure in the event that the approximately 1,200 Americans on Grenada are endangered by the overthrow of the Government there, the official said. No Immediate Danger He emphasized that there was no indication that the Americans faced any immediate danger.

Working Toward an Untarnished Image In cool but sunny weather yesterday in Central Park, Steven A. Tatti sat perched in the lap of a bronze statue of Fitz-Greene Halleck, the 19th-century poet, as he worked to clean it. Today is expected to be clear and milder. z