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Just because a pianist from Northern Ireland and a soprano from the United States captured medals--and many a Russian heart--at the recent Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow, is no signal to Westerners that the Soviet Union has slipped a bit in the cultural race. So stated Daniel Pollack, an American pianist who was a finalist at the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition and who has just returned to Los Angeles after serving as vice-chairman of the 1986 jury.

"I am fighting the war, and my weapon is 300 posters," wrote the Soviet artist P. Sokolov-Skalya during World War II. "I see my posters in the streets of Moscow, on the walls of houses and in shop windows. . . . I visited the front lines, and there too I saw our posters in dugouts, in pillboxes and trenches, even on tree trunks and telegraph poles. But perhaps my most vivid recollection of the front was a tank ready to enter battle. The driver threw the turret hatch open and climbed inside.

WASHINGTON - Fifty-two years after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, famed Cold War pilot Francis Gary Powers will be posthumously awarded the Silver Star.  The medal will be presented by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz to Powers' grandson and granddaughter at a Pentagon ceremony attended by other family members next Friday. Powers, who died in 1977 at age 47 in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles, will be recognized for his "indomitable spirit, exceptional loyalty" and "sustained courage in an exceptionally hostile environment," according to the citation.

Too bad Rosenberg couldn't permit Ted Turner to give us a rare look at some positive aspects of Soviet society without including those boring knee-jerk anti-Sovieticisms. He devoted more space to his labored sentiments to discredit Turner and narrator Roy Scheider than to the show. EUGENE KUSMIAK Fallbrook

Lutheran World Ministries has canceled a May 26-June 18 peace study trip by 22 Lutherans to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe because of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The Rev. Paul A. Wee, general secretary of the ministries, U.S. arm of the Lutheran World Federation, says the decision was "exceedingly difficult" but many unknowns remain about effects of the accident in the Soviet Ukraine.

Opposition leader Kim Young-sam will pay a visit to the Soviet Union from June 2 to 10, the first by a South Korean political leader, his aides said last week. They said Kim, a runner-up in the 1987 presidential elections, had been invited by Evergeni Primakov, director of the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

In a sign of the thaw in Vatican-Soviet relations, Moscow has for the first time given Pope John Paul II permission to fly over the Soviet Union. Moscow has agreed to let Italy's Alitalia airline fly the Polish-born Pope over Soviet territory this month when he sets off on a tour of South Korea, Indonesia and Mauritius, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Friday.

The first concert performance in the Soviet Union of pianist Vladimir Horowitz in more than 61 years will be covered in its entirety by CBS News on a special two-hour edition of "CBS Sunday Morning" on April 20. Airtime in Los Angeles is set for 9-11 a.m. The program also will include reports from Moscow from CBS' Charles Kuralt, who will follow Horowitz through his preparations for the concert and comment from the scene of the event.

The Soviet Union will not broadcast live coverage of Saturday's "Live Aid" rock concert, a state television spokesman said Wednesday. China said it too would not broadcast the concert. Organizers of the charity concert had said both countries would be among 150 countries to show performances by Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and David Bowie. The concerts are being staged in London, Sydney, Australia, and Philadelphia to raise money for African drought victims.