sicilian sveshnikov: aggressive or passive? dull or exciting? more tactical or positional?
Sveshnikov is in general a very dynamic opening since you accept a weakness of your pawn structure right from the start which you have to compensate for. Of course you have to know some variations there to hold your own but the sveshnikov equalizes quite comfortably if you do know your stuff. It also is a little bit positional as white always try to secure the d5 square and in many cases plays the move a4 to open up the queenside to get active play. Black in many cases goes for kingsside play with the move f7-f5. Today people avoid in most cases the sveshnikov by playing 3.Bb5 which seems to be quite annoying.
Hope this was helpful.

From the other side of the board, I love Sveshnikov's c.2010 book, The Complete c3 Sicilian. That plus John Emm's c.2008, Starting Out the c3 Sicilian give enough ideas behind the opening to get to a playable middle game without throwing away the White d-Pawn that even though you're out of the book early on, you know what you want to do. White scores about even in master-level games but I think it gives us sub-master White players more of the the positions we know how to use than 1 e4 c5 and eventually d4 cxd4 does.
If you're playing 1...c5 after 1 e4, you need to be prepared for 2 c3 or the Closed Sicilian where White usually plays 2 Nc3 3 g3 4 Bg2 and grabs a lot of initial space, but I think White has to spend too much time defending the space rather than making threats and Black does significantly better than White in master-level games. Still, I'm looking for ways to use it. Note that theoretically such openings shouldn't give Black an advantage, though with best play they may lead to a faster equality.

There is no further a distiction between tactical and positional play. Do you call the idea that by constantly “thretening” to sacrifice a pawn on f3 and initiate an attack on white king prevents white from outright focusing all forces and winning Black’s d-pawn a positional or a tactical play?! I will say deep positional.
I've heard many contradictory descriptions of the sveshnikov. Some people say exciting, some dull. Some aggressive, some passive. Some positional, some tactical.
So I wanted to create a thread to see people's opinions on this opening.
Obviously, there is a LOT of grey area between many of the terms I used in the title. I know this opening can fall into pretty much every category I listed, like virtually all openings. But I'm looking for general opinions, not specific ones.
So, what do you think?