Like the GPU before it, the OGPU operated - in theory - with more restraint than the original Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka of 1917-1922. Unlike the Cheka, the OGPU could not shoot "counter-revolutionaries" at will, and most suspected political criminals had to be brought before a judge. The OGPU's powers increased greatly in 1926, when the Soviet criminal code [ru] was amended to include a section on anti-state terrorism.