Soils have been increasingly endured environmental perturbations due to varying degrees of direct or indirect human activities. Microorganisms are the major drivers of soil ecological processes and their ability to resist (i.e. resistance) and recover from (i.e. resilience) these perturbations determines the sustainability of ecosystem functionalities. Thus, it is of great importance to clarify how environmental perturbations influence the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities. This review aims to summarize the recent advances in resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities to perturbations and the underlying mechanisms. We firstly briefly describe the concepts of resistance and resilience. Resistance is defined as the degree to which soil microbial communities do not change in response to the perturbations, while resilience as the rate at which soil microbial communities return to the initial state after the perturbations. Resistance and resilience can be calculated by comparing the relative changes in the community composition and/or functions under disturbance treatment relative to control at the same sampling point. Subsequently, we carry out a literature analysis of microbial community response to perturbations. We find that soil microbial communities are generally not resistant to perturbations and only a few investigations suggest a full recovery when the perturbations are removed. We also find that tillage always decreases the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities while input of organic materials into soils usually increases that. We then discuss how intrinsic attributes and extrinsic factors contribute to the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities to perturbations. The intrinsic attributes are presented at the individual, population, and community levels, respectively. At the individual level, dormancy and stress tolerance can be two advantageous strategies for soil microorganisms to maximize their geometric fitness under unfavorable conditions. At the population level, the lift-history strategy (copiotrophs/oligotrophs, r/K strategists) and trait-based frameworks from plant ecology (competitor-stress tolerator-ruderal, CSR theory) can help partially explain the capacity of soil microorganisms to resist and recover from perturbations. At the community level, it is suggested that the microbial diversity, community composition (the relative abundance of fungi vs bacteria, and rare vs dominant species) as well as the interaction (networks) among microbes collectively contribute to the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities. The extrinsic factors include the legacy effect of perturbations as well as soil abiotic factors. In the last section, we propose some future research directions:(1) combine trait-based approaches with molecular tools to identify key functional traits related to the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities to perturbations; (2) emphasize the resistance and resilience of soil multifunctionality because ecosystems can simultaneously carry out the multiple functions; and (3) understand the resistance and resilience of the interaction between plants and microbes to global change stress. These insights into the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities have functional implications for systematic evaluation of soil health and could predict the impacts of perturbations on ecosystem functions and their feedback under future global change scenarios.