The effect of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) on Manakov solitons and dispersion managed solitons is treated analytically and by numerical simulation. In the analytic approach the internal motion of the Manakov soliton is represented as a damped harmonic oscillator. The PMD functions as a white noise source driving the oscillations. It is shown that the solitons can withstand PMD up to a certain instability threshold for which an analytic expression is obtained. This threshold is also evaluated for dispersion managed solitons.