The study focuses on the analysis of patriotism in the structure of civil identity as one of the key issues in the consolidation of the country's population and ensuring its effective development. The Federal state structure of Russia actualizes the study of the process and forms of self-identification of citizens by means of a spatial and territorial feature, including the analysis of patriotism through the prism of the dichotomy "love for the Fatherland – love for a small homeland". The main directions of research of these phenomena in Russian science about the correlation of the studied categories, about variants of typology of patriotism, both interdisciplinary and actually sociological, are described. The results of a specific sociological study conducted among residents of the Astrakhan region on a representative sample are presented. The questions about the cognitive, affective, connotative components of regional identity and its component, being local patriotism, are highlighted.