Inelastic Hadron Diffraction in High Energy Elastic Scattering of Nuclei

The r^{o}le of inelastic diffraction in elastic scattering of nuclei is studied in the formalism of \emph{diffractive limit}. The results obtained for scattering of the $\alpha$–particles on light nuclei show that the nucleonic diffraction is especially important at large momentum transfers where the Glauber model of geometric diffraction fails.