Fairbairn, in his book, "Shooting to Live," said that if it was thought that the bad guys were using .30 Mauser pistols, which uses almost the same round, the police immediately went looking for bulletproof vests (ironically). He did believe that it wasn't as good as a larger caliber but was terrible if bones were hit. But he also said that the more he learned about stopping power, the less sure he was about it.
The .30 Tokarev is a pretty fierce round and I've always wondered if the Russians dropped it because it was hard on pistols. It is true that the AK largely made pistol caliber submachine guns obsolete, so there was no need to have a pistol caliber to use in a submachine gun, although that was still done with the replacement caliber, the 9mm Makarov. I have read that some thought was given to going back to the older caliber.
I believe that "manstopper" bullets were available for the .30 Mauser even before WWI when the Mauser C-96 was a fairly popular private purchase pistol among military officers.
