November 17, 1984

Text of statement, page 6. MOSCOW, Nov. 16 - Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, said today that she had returned to the Soviet Union because in her 17 years in the West she was never free for a single day and lived tormented by guilt and longing for her children in Russia. Miss Alliluyeva, who brought her American-born daughter with her when she returned after living for 15 years in the United States and two in England, said her decision was ''purely human'' and voluntary. She said she had contemplated coming back twice before. She said her final decision on Sept. 10, which was announced by the Soviet Union on Nov. 2, was prompted by the illness of her son and the loss of contact with her oldest daughter. Both are Soviet citizens.

In a week of startling images of the shuttle Discovery on a salvage mission in space, one stands out as a vision of the future: astronauts manipulating wrenches as they worked methodically in the cold void. They plucked satellites from orbit, wrestled them into the payload bay and bolted them into place. It was a mission that demonstrated the skills and daring needed for an impending era in which construction crews in spacesuits may be called on to erect platforms or stations or even whole vehicles while floating in space. This mission also highlighted a new physics of danger never faced by workers on earth.

A Salvadoran opposition leader said today that the insurgents were willing to modify a longstanding policy of refusing to participate in elections until they gain a formal role in the Government. The opposition leader, Guillermo Ungo, head of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the political wing of the guerrilla opposition, said in an interview here that the insurgents were prepared in principle to participate in elections organized by the Government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte. The Salvadoran Government and the Reagan Administration have repeatedly said that the guerrillas cannot gain a share of power unless they stop fighting and participate in elections. 'Right to Participate' Mr. Ungo said a political settlement of the Salvadoran civil war would be impossible unless the insurgents gained some share of power. But he said that the exact shape of their involvement remained open to negotiation and that their participation in elections was not necessarily contingent on their gaining a share of power.

Reagan Administration officials have set an objective of driving the annual Federal deficit below $150 billion by 1988, high level officials said today. To reach that goal, the officials said, the Administration budget would have to propose deep cuts in such domestic programs as Medicare, civil service retirement, student loans and farm subsidies. Specific options for spending cuts to reach the target by the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1988, will be presented to President Reagan after his Thanksgiving vacation in California. No Balanced Budgets Sought The projected deficits for this fiscal year and next are running at about $200 billion. Mr. Reagan has ruled out two possible ways to reduce them, raising taxes or cutting Social Security, and has expressed opposition to any slowing of military spending. Congress is expected to resist any proposal to slash domestic spending.

The Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko, called today for a return to the era of Soviet-American detente. He said this could open the way to ''broad possibilities for cooperation'' in such things as combating famine and protecting the world's environment. In answers to written questions submitted by an NBC News correspondent, Marvin Kalb, Mr. Chernenko also said that if the Reagan Administration was sincere, the way was open to resolving key arms-control questions. ''If the statements that are being made lately in Washington with regard to the desire to seek solutions to problems of arms limitation do not remain just words, we could, at last, start moving toward more normal relations between our two countries and toward a more secure world,'' Mr. Chernenko said.