November 24, 1989

LEAD: Zoya Zdanovskaya was alone in her cramped Moscow apartment on the night of Dec. 7, 1988, and desperate about her year-old grandson, Kirill. Believing she had ''nothing to lose,'' she wrote a letter to the Voice of America and sent it to Washington.

LEAD: Severe arthritis makes it hard for Anna Camacho to negotiate her studio apartment, let alone the outside world of steps and heavy doors and traffic. But at the age of 77, with no living relatives, she finds herself not well enough to be independent, but not so sick as to need a nursing home.

LEAD: Japan's decision to award a lucrative computer chip patent to Texas Instruments Inc. is probably not a sign that the Japanese patent system will be streamlined, patent and trade specialists say. American manufacturers have long contended that Japan's system is rigged against them.

LEAD: The leaders of the flight attendants' union at Eastern Airlines told the members yesterday to return to work, a day after the pilots' union abandoned its nearly nine-month walkout.

LEAD: Thanksgiving crept up on Delisa Holman and Cheryl-Dawn Dyer, East Villagers who came to New York four years ago from La Marque, Tex. As they celebrated early, a night of fried shrimp and white wine in the cozy roadhouse atmosphere of the Gulf Coast on West 12th Street in Manhattan dissolved into the most American of holidays.