Trotsky opposed the revolutionary offensive in both military and political spheres

Evidence

Paradoxically, in view of Gramsci’s analogy here, in the military debate of 1920-21 Trotsky was the main opponent of war of manoeuvre, or the tactic of the revolutionary offensive, which was put forward by those civil war generals who supported the idea of a “proletarian military science” Frunze, Budyenny and also Tukhachevsky. Moreover, he also delivered the main attack at the Third Comintern Congress on the “theory of the off ensive” in the political sphere; its main supporters were the PCI (see General Introduction), the Left in the German party, and Bela Kun. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2301

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the analogy Gramsci draws between Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution and war of manoeuvre, so it qualifies the toolkit concept of manoeuvre versus positional warfare.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The general who refused the offensive’ — how the theorist of permanent revolution became the Comintern’s leading critic of the revolutionary offensive tactic.