George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a fable because this genre is one of the most effective satirical literary devices. Orwell desired to satirize the Soviet Union--to show that Stalinism was not true to the principles of the Russian Revolution. The format of the fable allows one to accomplish this without bogging down the reader in pages and pages of narrative.
The reason Animal Farm is so much shorter than 1984--Orwell's most popular work--is that symbolism accomplishes much of the descriptive legwork. Orwell does not have to spend pages and pages proving that Napoleon and the other pigs are pigs; he makes them actual pigs and reinforces this description throughout the book.
Moreover, the simplicity of the fable inhibits the peculiar psychology of the author from impeding the story's narrative and moral. It is for this reason that C.S. Lewis--an expert on allegory--considered Animal Farm vastly superior to the dystopian 1984.
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