The article deals with issues around the relationship between political trust and satisfaction with political institutions, and confirms the isomorphism of these phenomena on the basis of the empirical data provided by all-Russian research. Existing research into trust in this field has concluded that, regarding institutions of the modern service state, satisfaction with the services they provide often reveals no relationship between this satistifcation and the level of trust in the government and other political institutions. In contrast to the satisfaction associated with the instrumental aspects of public institutions, satisfaction with the work of political institutions in this study demonstrates a strong correlation with trust, and is associated with the normative aspect of institutions. The article also examines the relationship between trust in political institutions and satisfaction with the perceptions of the causes of poverty in society as a fundamental social phenomenon related to the normative foundations of social order in Russia. The use of principal component factor analysis found that there are two alternative justifications of the causes of poverty: a structural justification (which associates poverty with the properties of existing institutions) and a non-structural justification (which does not associate poverty with institutional reasons). The structural justification of poverty negatively correlates with indicators of political trust and satisfaction with the performance of political institutions, whilst the justification of poverty by factors not controlled by institutions is associated with trust and satisfaction with positive correlation. People who assume that institutions are responsible for the reproduction of an unjust social order are less likely to trust them and less satisfied with their performance. The findings confirm that the normative aspect of political institutions is more important than the instrumental one.