Most literary critics believe that in these two books Orwell described communism, the society during Stalin's reign and the October Revolution. Just don't be fooled - the bad things described do happen in any system where people with a strong desire for power and money are the ones who rule the country!
Although George Orwell also wrote some other novels and non-fiction books, these two novels should be the must-reads of every human being on the planet because they portray, in a very easy and picturesque way, the likely future of any revolution or social order. In his books, Orwell described the universal phenomenon in all social structures, which is that, as time goes by, the same psychological types of people strive for domination and power, and therefore the final stage of development of all systems is very similar.
George Orwell died relatively young at the age of 47, but to our good fortune he managed to leave behind his remarkable novels from which we can learn a great deal about ourselves, i.e., the human race.
