Local communities of small Russian cities (each up to 50 thousand inhabitants) found themselves in a special extreme situation amid the coronavirus pandemic. There is 794 small towns (about 16 million people - 15.51%) out of all 1117 Russian cities. In small towns, additional resources were needed to meet the requirements of a medical, administrative, economic and economic order. But they were mainly at the disposal of the federal and regional authorities. The population, local community and local authorities of the Russian small town are adapting to the new conditions of the pandemic. They face a number of difficulties in maintaining a stable situation in the economy, reducing unemployment and maintaining employment. There are difficulties in finding opportunities to solve medical problems, the necessary financial resources to help local businesses and community. Meanwhile, the pandemic has sparked some appeal of life in medium-sized cities, small towns and rural areas among residents of large cities. According to a number of expert assessments, this trend is determined by a low incidence rate in provincial small towns, opportunities for arranging comfortable living, transport, information and communication accessibility, and consumption levels. This still small factor is new in the post-pandemic transformation of the local territory. A more significant element of the adaptive transformation of a small town is the identity of the local community, which has not undergone a special test during the years of post-Soviet transformation. Local identity is constantly influenced by such factors as a decrease in the population size, migration sentiments, restructuring of the economic structure etc. The core of an identity of the local community consists of a number of attributes: solidarity, common values, priorities, lifestyles, traditions, mores, network connections, interaction with local authorities, budgetary institutions, social media, economic resources. Special functionality is inherent in a periphery of the changing identity of the local community, which includes an influence of the local community on the nature of stable relations, social capital, the level of trust, weak and strong ties. A serious transformation has occurred due to the threat of an increase in the number of infected, sick, and deaths from covid-19. The success of the local society in adapting to force majeure conditions of existence is associated with the potential of collective mobilization – readiness for tests, forms of support, material and spiritual consolidation, solidarity of the local community, justice. All these attributes are directly included in the content of civilizational identity: in the existing social differentiation and inequality in a local community, in the practices of everyday life, in institutional orders and traditions, in the social dispositions of local residents, actors and leaders, social networks, and communicative communities. These attributes of local community’s civilizational identity of express its segmentation, originality and autonomy of cultural practices, and the amount of social capital.