Joseph Filner

H. Joseph Filner was a prominent communist , turned industrialist.

Divorced from his first wife, Sarah F. Filner, Joseph Filner was survived by his wife of 47 years, Doris. He was the father of congressman Bob Filner, Dr. Bernard Filner, a Maryland physician who specializes in pain medicine, a stepdaughter Nancy Stein who is associated with the Little Red School House of New York, and five grandchildren.

Early life

Joseph Filner, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, was born in Pittsburgh, PA, and used to work in his parents' bakery and drive the delivery truck. Concerned about the conditions of workers at other bakeries, he became involved as an organizer for the bakers' union and later for the Teamsters, Steelworkers and other industrial unions.

He enlisted in the Army for World War II, fighting with the 180th Infantry Regiment through North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. He was among the American soldiers who witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis at Dachau after his unit liberated the concentration camp.

Communist Party

In 1942, H. Joseph Filner was secretary of the Pittsburgh Communist Party USA.

Levison

Joseph Filner was a close friend and business associate of secret Communist Party USA member, Stanley Levison.

Business career

Following the war, Filner returned briefly to the bakery business, but thereafter recognized how important stainless steel scrap metal would become to American industry. He founded the Stainless and Alloy Corporation of America, eventually expanding its scope of operations worldwide. In the process he also formed and operated Considar Inc., Newmet Corp., and Project Development Inc.

Backing MLK

According to congressman Bob Filner, his father Joseph Filner had read about Martin Luther King in the 1950s when the civil rights leader still was in the early stages of his career, while serving as a pastor in Montgomery, Ala. Filner telephoned the young minister and told him he was impressed with what he was doing.

"How can I help?" Joseph Filner asked.

King said that the need to earn his salary made it difficult for him to travel too far from home. How much is that? Joseph Filner required. Shyly (as Congressman Filner remembered the tale), King said it was $35,000.

Joseph Filner said he would see what he could do. A successful scrap metals trader, Filner assembled some personal friends and business associates -- "most of them Jewish," the congressman remembered -- and told them about King and his work.

"They contributed over $100,000," the congressman said. "That money really helped King to put his Southern Christian Leadership Conference on a sound financial footing."

After Bob Filner became involved in politics, one of the people who campaigned for him was Andrew Young, then mayor of Atlanta, Ga. Young had been mentored by Martin Luther King, and he remembered Joseph Filner well. At one point, he told a campaign rally that he supported Bob Filner's candidacy not only because of their shared Democratic viewpoints, but also, quite simply, "because of his daddy."==Father's legacy== After Bob Filner became involved in politics, one of the people who campaigned for him was Andrew Young, then mayor of Atlanta, Ga. Young had been mentored by Martin Luther King, and he remembered, King's financial backer Joseph Filner well. At one point, he told a campaign rally that he supported Bob Filner's candidacy not only because of their shared Democratic viewpoints, but also, quite simply, "because of his daddy."

Frieda Foundation

Filner created a charitable foundation, the Frieda Foundation, through which he gave to many leftist causes, especially programs to "rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation."

Marketing Soviet military technology

In May 1990, A high-ranking Soviet scientist came to Capitol Hill recently to lecture members of Congress on why the United States should buy technology developed for the Soviet Union's military and space programs.

Among the products of Soviet research that have already found their way into the American market are metal-forming techniques, coatings that greatly extend the life of cutting tools and a new way to track radiation dosages.

That the Soviet Union is willing to offer technology even with military applications was evident in a recent deal involving a consortium including the Soviet Institute for Structural Macrokinetics, which the visiting scientist, Dr. Aleksandr G. Merzhanov, directs. The institute, situated near Moscow, studies materials fabrication. The consortium agreed to supply Soviet-made high-temperature superconducting powders to a small American company that would seek markets in this country.

Superconducting powders have no resistance to electricity and can be formed into valuable components in electric motors, power transformers and the like. They remain on United States lists of products that cannot be exported to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union without special permits.

Company 'Pretty Impressed'

I don't think Dr. Merzhanov and his process would have been in the United States three or four years ago, said Peter Walsh, vice president of Project Development International Inc., based in New York, which helps market Soviet products and technology in this country. The Soviet Government is actively promoting defense-related technology.

Robert D. DeLuca, the chief executive of HiTc Superconco Inc., the small research company near Philadelphia that is buying the superconducting powders, said his company was pretty impressed by them. He said the Soviet material, like other high-temperature superconductors a synthetic compound of copper oxide, yttrium and barium, is purer than the powders his company makes internally. And the Soviet fabrication process is much faster, taking place in seconds rather than the several days required for conventional processing.

The Soviet research establishment is vast, amounting to 1.5 million people working in thousands of institutes and industrial establishments, Soviet officials say. But while in the past it was supported completely by the state, such financing is now being cut back, so the scientists and engineers employed there are trying to find new sources of revenue. Most of the deals being signed now are small and largely experimental in nature.

We have to organize our work so we are not depending so much on Government support, Dr. Merzhanov said. This includes broader sources of financing.

More deals are likely as Soviet research institutes forge links with marketing organizations in this country.

In recent weeks Genesis Technology Group in Cambridge, Mass., formed a partnership with Biogen, a group of 26 Soviet biological institutes. The partnership will try to market such products as amino-acid food supplements and drugs to treat alcoholism. It will also try to interest Western pharmaceutical companies in sponsoring research at the institutes in return for rights to the results.

'World-Class Technology'

Arthur D. Little Inc., a consulting firm also situated in Cambridge, signed an agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences to evaluate a wide variety of technologies and to market them in the West. The two are to form a company called E'West Managers, which will have its headquarters in Geneva and Moscow.

There are some fields where Soviet research institutes are known to have world-class technology and science, said Theodore P. Heuchling, a senior vice president at Little. Among them: nuclear fusion, which is both the basic mechanism of the hydrogen bomb and a potential source of cheap electric power; high-energy lasers, and gallium-arsenide solar-power cells.

Some of the technologies involved were clearly developed for military defense reasons, said Alfred E. Wechsler, another Little official. The attitude is that now they should be moved into the commercial area.

John Kiser, the president of Kiser Research Inc. of Washington, which represents Dr. Merzhanov's institute in this country, said the Soviet Union had long been more willing to market advanced technology in the West than Western governments had been to permit technology to flow the other way. In the book Communist Entrepreneurs, he notes that technologies as diverse as surgical stapling, magnetic casting of aluminum and synthesis of polycarbonates originated in the Soviet Union.

Metal-Coating Process

Joseph H. Filner, the president of Project Development International, said a metal-coating process now being marketed in the United States by Multi-Arc Vacuum Systems Inc. of St. Paul had originally been developed for the Soviet nuclear program. The process increases the life of cutting tools like drills and mills as much as sixfold by depositing a thin layer of titanium nitride on the surface.

Researchers in the United States knew the advantages of titanium nitride, but the temperature of the process they had developed, more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, was so high that many of the tools became deformed, limiting their usefulness. Meanwhile, Soviet scientists had found a way to apply the coating at 800 to 900 degrees. We found they had better technology, so we bought it and brought it back to this country, Mr. Filner said. The treated tools, recognizable by the golden coating, are now widely used in American industry, including in military plants, and are beginning to turn up in consumer markets, Product Development officials said.

More recently, Mr. Filner found that scientists at the Riga Medical Institute in Latvia had developed a radiation detector - a crystal that has been treated with selected impurities - that is 50 times more sensitive than the one commonly used in the United States.

The Soviet aluminum-oxide crystal detector can measure one-tenth of a millirem of radiation, compared with a maximum sensitivity of five millirems for a standard lithium fluoride detector, said Arthur C. Lucas, vice president for technology at Victoreen Inc., in Cleveland.

Questions of Origin Not Asked

Mr. Lucas said the devices may have been developed for the Soviet nuclear navy, but they are not saying and we are not going to ask. He said the quality of Soviet materials science was very good.

All they need is an economic structure that can take advantage of the advances they have made, he said.

The detectors are being made in a Soviet-American joint venture in Riga as Victoreen attempts to build a market in the United States. Mr. Lucas said the company estimated it could sell 300,000 to 500,000 of the detector crystals a year.

Because the Soviet Government allocated resources to military and space programs rather than consumer goods, it stands to reason that military-derived developments are among its most marketable products, Mr. Kiser of Kiser Research said. The closer something is to a military application, the less likely it is they need help from us, he added.

Freedom From Profit Pressure

The lack of commercial markets for much of the technology developed by researchers in the Soviet Union has been a big economic drag on the nation. Then again, Soviet scientists, free of the pressure to push technology into applications that improve quarterly profits, have been able to pursue projects for decades. The process that produces the superconducting powders and other materials has been developed over 20 years by Dr. Merzhanov, a physicist, and his wife, Dr. Inna Borovinskaya, a chemist.

Lacking commercial interests to protect, Soviet scientists are also eager to license their technologies so they can gain access to Western computers and analytic instruments.

Mr. Filner cautioned, however, that the quality of Soviet finished goods remained uneven and that some Soviet scientific claims tended to be exaggerated. They are converting a missile plant in the Urals to produce videocassette recorders, he said. I don't think we will be able to sell many Soviet VCR's over here soon. For the next 10 years their best exports will be brains and semifinished goods.

Photos: Soviet aluminum-oxide crystal radiation detectors, which have been acquired by Victoreen Inc. in Cleveland and are 50 times more sensitive than detectors commonly used in the United States (Barney Taxel for The New York Times) (pg. D1); Dr. Aleksandr G. Merzhanov, director of the Soviet Institute for Structural Macrokinetics, during his visit to Washington where he was trying to sell Soviet technology to American companies