From 1934 to 1939, the historian Richard Hofstadter briefly was a member of the Young Communist League USA. Despite disillusionment because of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and the ideological rigidity of the Communist party-line, Hofstadter remained a fellow traveler until the 1940s. In "Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World" (2003), Eric Foner said that Hofstatdter continued thinking of himself as a political radical, because his opposition to capitalism was the reason he had joined the CPUSA.